Most of the fiction about Peoples Temple and Jonestown is bad. It ranges from pulp novels featuring hard-boiled adventurers to didactic morality tales expounding upon the dangers of cults. Sex is usually involved as well. Several readers asked what *good* fiction exists, and I have a couple of responses. First, is to direct readers to the listing on the Alternative Considerations website, which includes pretty much everything that’s out there that we know of: and if something is missing, let us know: http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=18186. Second, I do want to mention three upcoming works of fiction. To be published this November is White Nights, Black Paradise (Infidel Books 2015), by Sikivu Hutchinson, a noted African American feminist scholar.The novel tells the story of Peoples Temple from the perspective of its black women members, young and old. I am just now starting to read it, but the writing is excellent. If you’d like to take a peek, visit the Infidel Press website and scroll down to read “The Ghost” (http://infidelbooks.com/). You can read more by Hutchinson on the Jonestown website: http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=61499.
In progress is Annie Dawid’s novel Paradise Undone, parts of which have won awards and been published in pieces. “Jonestown: Thirty Years On,” a substantive chunk of the novel, was published in the fall of 2014 in Best New Writing 2015 (Hopewell Publications) an annual anthology of fiction. You can read a number of Dawid’s articles on the Jonestown website: http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=18146. Also in progress is Laura Woollett’s book Beautiful Revolutionary, best described in her own words, “as a novel focusing on the young, white female membership, following one young woman in particular, Evelyn Lynden,” a pseudonym for my sister Carolyn Layton. Woollett has published short stories about Peoples Temple and Jonestown, one of which I posted to Facebook, another of which, “Soybeans,” will appear in the upcoming jonestown report. To read more visit: http://lauraelizabethwoollett.com/beautiful-revolutionary/. Finally, there are a couple of older works worth mentioning. Wilson Harris’ Jonestown is deep, dense, and almost unreadable. Harris, who himself was born and raised in Guyana before he moved to England, uses the events of Jonestown to discuss genocide of indigenous peoples, colonialism, and other topics. The book is poetic, but not easy to follow because it moves back and forth in time. I note this book because it is important, but like most classics, rarely read. Bill of Rights, by Fred D’Aguiar, is a book length poem, that also uses Jonestown as the point of departure for a critique of colonialism, both in Guyana and in England. It is a much better work—better written, better conceived—than D’Aguiar’s recent novel about Jonestown Children of Paradise (Harper Perennial 2015). Fraser Sutherland’s Jonestown is another book length poem. It is well researched, and tells the story of Peoples Temple in thoughtful and sympathetic way. Scott Blackwood’s We Agreed to Meet Just Here is not really about Jonestown, although Jim Jones appears to a physician dying of cancer who was a doctor in Jonestown who escaped. (This is not Larry Schacht, by the way.) I note this book because it is well-written, and includes an on-going dialogue between a survivor and Jim Jones about what happened in Jonestown. Interesting. Comments are closed.
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Author Rebecca Moore is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. She is currently Reviews Editor for Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions and Co-Director of The Jonestown Institute. Archives
December 2021
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