Stories from Jonestown

July 9, 2012
On November 18, 1978, 918 people, including U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, died in Jonestown, Guyana, most of them members of the Peoples Temple who drank poisoned punch at the urging of their charismatic leader, Jim Jones. In this approach to the tragic and unsettling subject, Fondakowski, a playwright and former head writer for The Laramie Project, focuses not on Jones but on members of the Peoples Temple who were away from the compound and survived. Culled from hundreds of hours of interviews gathered for her play The People’s Temple, Fondakowski spoke both to people who have devoted their lives to trying to understand the tragedy and those who have kept their past connections with Jonestown a secret. She encounters wildly different views of life at Jonestown: for some, it was paradise. For others, it was hell in the jungle. Most wrenching are the reminiscences of those like Nell Smart, who struggles with the thought of her mother giving Nell’s four children the poisoned Flavor-Aid (not Kool-Aid, as is commonly believed). Fondakowski explores the beginnings of the Peoples Temple in Ukiah, Calif., and how it expanded—through cross-country bus trips—until Jones took his followers to Guyana in 1977. Fondakowski perfectly captures the rapturous hope surrounding Jonestown, which makes its demise all the more heartbreaking.

September 1, 2012
A collection of sympathetic interviews with members of the Peoples Temple and others who were connected with the mass suicide/murders of more than 900 people at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. Fondakowski, who shaped some 300 hours of taped interviews into the play The People's Temple, expands the material into this full-length book. The author asked her interviewees to recollect their lives, tell her what they thought about Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of Peoples Temple, and, if they were members, how they were drawn to him, what they experienced as members of his church, and what their lives have been like in the aftermath of the tragedy. Their stories show how Jones created a mixed-race church focused at first on issues of racial equality and social justice. At some point, it became a radical cult, with Jones using harsh discipline and physical abuse to control every aspect of the members' lives. A power in the political world of 1960s San Francisco, Jones seems to have become wildly paranoid in the '70s, moving his followers out of the United States to the isolation of a South American jungle. Fondakowski also captures the words of politicians, community leaders, other journalists and investigators, but former members' recollections, which are often contradictory, constitute the bulk of the narrative. Through the probing interviews, the author makes manifest their humanity and suffering, but Jones remains a mystery. We know that his movement failed and that he ordered the deaths of hundreds, but the how and why of the man and his mission remain murky. Hours of taped and edited interviews do not add up to a satisfying book.

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August 1, 2012

Fondakowski, head writer of The Laramie Project, an examination of the murder of Matthew Shepard, was invited to create a similar theatrical work by survivors of the People's Temple, engraved in our cultural memory because of the deaths of hundreds of followers in Jonestown, Guyana. This is the story of the work that went into developing the play, The People's Temple, presenting portions of interviews conducted by Fondakowski and her collaborators with surviving Temple members, family members of the dead, and others. The narrative of the interview process is combined with interview excerpts and selections from letters and memos from those who later died in Jonestown, all given context here. The movement began as a Christian church devoted to uplifting the poor and changed to a racially blind socialist experiment, then was transformed into a group whose membership and children were mostly killed. The book counters the image of suicidal cultists blindly following a bizarre leader. VERDICT This work presents a more complex picture of Jim Jones and his temple than that which currently holds sway and, as such, will be useful reading for all who are confused by the events of Jonestown.--Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Lib., Wisconsin Rapids, WI

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