McSWEENEY'S INTERNET TENDENCY'S PATREON

Help support our writers and keep our site ad-free.
Become a McSweeney’s Internet Tendency patron today.

The Four Deportations of Jean Marseille

Jean Marseille recorded these Dispatches on his phone while surviving on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti from October through December 2022. As the chaos that followed the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse in July 2021 devolved into further lawlessness, Jean witnessed first-hand a city in free fall. Not only was his own life upended—his young son was kidnapped and held for ransom, the beginning of many trials—but so were the lives of his fellow Haitian citizens as the government failed (or didn’t even attempt) to control the violence. Thanks to a device as ubiquitous as a phone, this is intimate, personal storytelling at its most urgent.