I didn't fit into the Christian college my parents sent me to. I felt tarnished by tragedy, between my brother's death and Escuela Caribe, and everyone else seemed so carefree and happy and praising God. I couldn't stand happy people for a long time, and was plagued by chronic migraines and stomach aches. I'd say between age thirteen and twenty-three was the most miserable time of my life. I wrote Jesus Land because I wanted there to be a record of David's life. I was surprised that so many people read it, and felt moved by it.
Julia ScheeresI remember one of my writer friends asking me, "Jonestown? Everyone knows the ending. What's new or surprising that you can say about it?" I told him that although people may know that almost one thousand people died in the massacre, they don't know what happens to my five people. Some escaped, some did not.
Julia ScheeresJim Jones used highly-edited videos and photos of Jonestown, showing what a supposed Eden it was. People were interviewed smiling and working in the fields, telling other church members to hurry down and join them. These interviews were staged; the people were told exactly what to say. Truth is, Jonestown never even produced enough food to feed everyone, and people were going hungry.
Julia ScheeresJonestown was supposed to be a great socialist experiment, a place where all the evil "isms" would be eradicated: racism, sexism, elitism. This appealed to blacks and white progressives alike. Fed up with racist "AmeriKKKa," they were going to start their own society, on their own terms.
Julia ScheeresI was working on a satirical novel about a charismatic preacher who takes over a small Indiana town. Then I remembered Jim Jones was from Indiana and Googled him. I learned that the FBI had recently released all the documents that agents collected from Jonestown after the massacre - over 50,000 pieces of paper and almost 1,000 audio tapes. I started reading the files and couldn't tear myself away; I find "true" stories inherently more powerful than fiction.
Julia ScheeresIn California, Jim Jones even staged a shooting of himself. The lesson of this was two-fold. One, that he was a god - he could heal himself. He had these magic powers. A large segment of his congregation came from a Pentecostal tradition that believed in faith healing and already believed Jones had the power to cure others. And two, the "shooting" made him seem important. Civil rights leaders were being gunned down - MLK, Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X - and he longed to be considered as heroic and important as they were.
Julia ScheeresJim Jones started out as a civil rights crusader in Indianapolis. As a young preacher in the mid-50s, he used members of his congregation to integrate lunch counters and all-white churches in rich neighborhoods; they'd just march in and sit down at the pews and see what happened. Often they were received with racist insults, and once with a bomb threat. But the fact that you had this charismatic, white man, aggressively promoting racial equality, was a huge draw for African Americans, many of whom felt the Civil Rights Movement had stalled by the late 60s.
Julia Scheeres