Rooney Translation Earns Statewide Honors

The novel Cécé, written by Emmelie Prophète and translated from the French by Upper School World Languages teacher Aidan Rooney P ’07, ’15, recently won the Massachusetts Book Award for Translated Literature. 

The Massachusetts Book Awards — administered by the Massachusetts Center for the Book — recognize significant works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, graphic novel/memoir, and children’s/young adult literature written, illustrated, or translated by current Massachusetts residents. This year’s awards were announced Sept. 2. 

“The urge to translate Emmelie Prophète’s sixth novel into English as crisp as the original French was simply irresistible,” said Rooney. “Ninety-five percent of our world lives where English is not the first language, and books from those countries make up just 5% of fiction sales in the United States, only a third of those by women. This Massachusetts Book Award recognizes that deficit, the need for finer pixelation in our literary makeup, a common wealth of voices alongside whom we walk.” 

Originally published in French as Les Villages de Dieu, Cécé tells the story of a 20-year-old Haitian woman who turns to sex work following the death of a caregiver; the woman, the eponymous Cécé, soon becomes an influencer on social media. Rooney’s translation is published by Archipelago Books. 

The coming-of-age novel is also one of a dozen works making the longlist for the National Award for Translation in Prose given by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). The longlist was announced Sept. 3; the shortlist will be announced Oct. 6; and the winner will be announced Oct. 23 at this year’s ALTA conference in Portland, Oregon. Such ALTA awards are given annually in poetry and in prose to literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality.

A teacher and coach at Thayer since 1988, Rooney is the author of three poetry collections: Day Release (2000), Tightrope (2007), and Go There (2020).