There were several parallels between Jonestown and Escuela Caribe. Both places used isolation to control a large group of people and censored their communication with the outside world so their loved ones wouldn't know about the rampant physical abuse and misery of the residents. I think the worst fallout, in both cases, was the living in constant fear, witnessing other residents get assaulted and worrying that you'd be next. That's where Post Traumatic Stress Disorder comes from.

Jonestown 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.

Life may not be fair, but when you have someone to believe in, life can be managed, and sometimes, even miraculous.

I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time, writing about mass death while I'm growing this precious little life inside me. Here I am, worried about everything I eat and drink and whether I walk past a smoker, and meanwhile I'm writing about an event where almost three hundred children were slaughtered. Most were never identified and are buried in a mass grave in Oakland. It was surreal. But it felt good to give Jim Jones's victims a voice, especially ordinary church members.

Before I went to Escuela Caribe, my parents showed me the school's brochures featuring smiling kids at the beach or on horseback. The propaganda was greatly appealing to a kid from rural Indiana who hated her high school anyway. I also got reassurances that I could return if I didn't like it. But shortly after the gates closed behind me, I learned I'd been deceived; the beach was far away and I couldn't return home until I'd completed the program.

In Berkeley, California is no sense of the "white way being the right way." Parents also come in every variety - mixed race marriages, gay partners, divorced moms. We all love our children and want to do right by them, and that's what matters most.

In 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.