“Ugly.” That’s the word some adults have used when they hear that I’ve written a book about Peoples Temple for teenagers. Why tell kids such an ugly story, they ask.
My immediate response (call it knee-jerk) is to correct them. It wasn’t all ugly, I counter.
But I understand their concern. For many, the words “Peoples Temple” conjure up images of a crazed leader and his brainwashed followers, as horror and death. Teenagers, they insist, should not be exposed to such things. It’s too uncomfortable. It’s too “ugly.” Shouldn’t we just ignore this chapter in history?
My answer is no. These days, teenagers are awash in information. Cordoning off nonfiction in a “children’s only” section won’t protect them. No matter where they live or how restrictive their home, school and community is, it’s hard to escape disturbing issues and images in their digital space. Most have already encountered Jonestown on podcasts and on YouTube. My role as a YA writer is to guide young people through that bewildering sea of information into narratives and ideas that provide clarity and understanding. It is to help them make sense of their present by revealing stories from our past.
The Peoples Temple story is especially illuminating. There’s so much here that speaks to today’s teens – social dynamics, identity, peer pressure, tribalism, undue influence, individual agency – issues they are very much focused on. And while Peoples Temple serves as a cautionary tale, it is also a very human one. Young people are bound to recognize themselves in the idealism of Annie Moore; the rebelliousness of Tommy Bogue; the love/hate feelings harbored by the teenaged Stephan Jones for his father.
Teenagers, however, won’t discover the lessons in this story unless I do my job and write plainly and specifically for them. While a book written for adults might cover the entire territory of the topic, a book for teens must get to the point quickly. Whether it’s just the distraction of growing up or the fast pace of these digital times, young adults have a definite need for momentum. I can’t assume they’ll be interested in what I have to say. Instead, I have to grab them from page one, pulling them in by intriguing or surprising them. I must use foreshadowing, highlighting, and cliffhanging. Above all, I must maintain an ongoing pace throughout that is driven by narrative force rather than density of research.
Not everything I learned about Peoples Temple is included in my book. Instead, I made choices. What scenes get to the heart of the story? What events reveal its essence? Take the book’s opening. It begins in America’s living rooms on November 24, 1978, with CBS’ special hour-long report “The Horrors of Jonestown.” At the time, Americans were eager for every graphic detail, and the media obliged them. I write:
The report began with a film of U.S. troops lugging body bags and aluminum caskets. Many of them wore masks to block the stench of decomposing flesh. But the masks did little good. After days beneath the hot sun and intermittent tropical rain, many of the bodies had bloated and burst. The faces of the dead were no longer recognizable, and in some cases soldiers had to use snow shovels to scoop up the rotting remains.
“These metal caskets will be opened and filled and closed again and again,” anchorman Bruce Morton said dramatically, “but the complete story of what happened to the members of the Peoples Temple settlement will remain open a long time.”
Here the broadcast cut to commercial—an abrupt and ghoulish switch. Viewers went from death to dandruff shampoo and denture cleaner.
This purposeful portrayal of carelessness and crassness is meant as a cri de coeur that aims to shock, challenge and awaken teenagers. I want teens to feel disgusted by the coverage. I want them to wonder why. And I want them to keep turning the pages to find out.
The beginning does something else, too. It clues readers into where I stand on the subject. Gone are the days of bland objectivity in books written for teenagers. After all, nowadays, other information and points of view are a mere click away. As long as my book is fair-minded and gives readers an easy path to finding other perspectives – including those on this website – I have taken care of my obligation to “coverage.” That way, I can draw on my own passion and curiosity. I can write an opinionated narrative.
My goal is to let the story unravel in the reader’s mind just as it does when they are reading a novel. I use quotations as dialogue, simple, direct exposition when filling in backstory or context, scenes and especially transitional scenes to push the story along. Without making anything up, I do my darndest to make my nonfiction read like fiction.
Here’s a brief example. The scene’s purpose to is show readers that Jim Jones’ ability to seduce people into taking inadvisable actions was present from childhood. It also works as foreshadowing, intriguing enough to keep teenagers reading:
One by one, Jimmy and the boys slipped into the warehouse. Slowly, their eyes adjusted to the darkness, and they saw what was inside: coffins, dozens of them.
Jimmy opened the lid of one and climbed in. He insisted the others do the same. He instructed them to just lie there. That way, they might find out what it was like to be dead. He wiggled into position, arranged his hands across his chest and closed his eyes.
It was too much for his companions. Yelping with fear, they bolted from the warehouse, leaving Jimmy behind.
He lay there, absorbed in morbid revelry. What happened to you after you died? What did it feel like?
The boy didn’t find any answers that night. But he kept going back to the coffins.
Despite Jimmy’s magnetism, the other boys never returned with him.
What about some of those “hot button” topics – the sex, the drugs, the brutality of catharsis sessions? Did I have to censor myself? In truth, I don’t feel the pressure to avoid certain subjects, but there are limits. For example, I chose not to dwell on Jim Jones’ sexual appetites. I suggested them and acknowledged his licentiousness without lingering on details. I felt that too much description would overwhelm the book and stop the reader cold. Besides, I asked myself, is it important to the story I’m telling? Yes, I did need to give young readers a sense of the nature of sex in Peoples Temple as practiced and preached by Jones. But I didn’t need to be vivid. And while some well-meaning adults may find what I’ve written for teenagers startling, given that popular novels and films for this age group – not to mention news headlines – explore physical and sexual violence, I am hardly out of bounds. I decided what to include in this book by keeping in mind what matters to a young person, and what larger issues are at stake in the book. The question is not how to avoid adult censorship, but rather how best to honor my central requirement of connecting with my young adult reader.
The book, now finished, is titled Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown. Written with teen readers in mind, it is, I believe, an honest telling that puts events into context. Yes, it’s “ugly” in places. But teens can handle it. They are more than capable of grappling with the complexities and complications, the contradiction and messiness. They can be trusted to draw the right conclusions; to connect the lessons of this story to their present day.
The book ends with a quote from Stephan Jones. “So what?” he asks teen readers. “What’s next?”
The answer is up to them.