[Editor’s note: Jane Schmucki was one of the students in Prof. Alexandra Prince’s class on Peoples Temple and Jonestown at Skidmore College in the Spring of 2025 who assisted in the transcription of letters from Jonestown residents. This is the paper she wrote about her experiences in working with the text.]
I find the task of summing up my transcriptions to any limited number of pages incredibly daunting. That being said, I have to try. The letters I transcribed spanned abrasive topics, anywhere from fucking to fighting. I also transcribed letters to friends, letters about cooking outside, letters about love, or a news report on every country the person could possibly think of. They felt deeply intimate and profoundly mundane at the same time. It felt like reading everyone’s journal. To hear people talk about themselves, sometimes so terribly, was difficult for me. Some were obviously struggling with being in Jonestown, and others were the happiest they had ever been.
Something I’ve gleaned from my time sitting with the transcriptions and readings of this class is how unreliable memory is. Some of the best evidence of this is Leslie Wagner-Wilson’s book “Slavery of Faith,” in contrast to her letters from Jonestown. In chapter eight of her book, Wagner-Wilson describes working in the medical office at Jonestown, how she enjoyed it, and how the work was fulfilling. She mentions that the medical office was “worthwhile work, and – by extension – my part in it made me feel worthwhile.”[1] She continues to say she loved the work. She had a lovely relationship with the doctor. This part of the chapter was almost an afterthought. She was merely describing what she was doing in passing. This chapter included descriptions of her husband and child, and all the different aspects of her life that were much more significant than her job.
My first-ever transcription letter was by Leslie Wagner-Wilson. It’s dated January 4th, 1978 and it begins with “I am a very self-centered bitch.”[2] This letter is mostly about her work in the medical office. She complains, saying that the care they gave was just glorified first aid. That she hated her coworkers and that she was miserable. Towards the end of the letter, she writes, “I don’tdeserve an education … save education for the young. They deserve.”[3]. While there were other letters telling Jim Jones about the terrible things they’d done or criticisms of themselves, I did not see another transcription quite like Leslie Wagner-Wilson’s. The self-hate and anger expressed in that letter felt motivated by more than just Jim Jones. And while she discusses self-criticism in her chapter, it’s a whole other beast in her personal letters. Part of this disparity that intrigues me is the sheer amount of time between these two testimonies. The letter was written in 1978, and her book was published in 2009. That’s 31 years apart. Now, I’m not assuming that Leslie Wagner-Wilson’s memory is completely wrong, but the fact is, those are two very different perspectives coming from two very different times.
This point is driven further by Rebecca Moore, author of “Peoples Temple and Jonestown in the 21st Century.”[4] Rebecca Moore is a Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. She’s done incredible work in humanizing the people of Peoples Temple, and has personal connections to the Peoples Temple Community. Her two sisters, Annie Moore and Carolyn Moore Layton, lived and died in Jonestown. In the introduction of the book, Rebecca Moore discusses the issue of misinformation about Peoples Temple and argues that “This problem is exacerbated by recent oral histories in which individuals recount the experiences of forty years earlier and introduce factual errors. The problem of misremembering details, or not having information in the first place, remains a potential drawback when relying on oral accounts.”[5] Wagner-Wilson’s testimony is just one example of how time, trauma, and external influences can completely change the narrative about what happened at Jonestown and what the Peoples Temple Community was like.
While I agree that maintaining facts about Peoples Temple, Jonestown, and people’s experiences are important, I also want to leave room for processing. Testimonies in the moment are important, and I think sometimes the farther away you are from an event, especially a traumatic one, the more perspective you can have on it. It just depends on the person. I think it’s good to be wary of testimonies that are completely different, and I think there’s room for people’s feelings to have changed since 1978.
The important thing about these letters is that the Jonestown narrative is filled only with survivors. Filled only with people who held their loved ones as they died in their arms, who ran through the jungle to get out. Filled with people who lost everyone they loved. And each of those testimonies is important. And I am in no way condoning mass death. But the people who lived and loved and died in Jonestown, who didn’t make it, their voices aren’t heard. Carolyn Looman isn’t here anymore to say how she felt in Guyana, to talk about her experiences, but her letters keep her voice alive. In writing, she says that “By bringing us to Guyana, you’ve eternally saved us, liberated us, from capitalist captivity.”[6] Carolyn was a Temple member from Canton, Ohio. She was thirty-five when she died. She was a teacher at the JonestownSchool. Now her words are out there for anyone who will listen, and she can speak. They all can.
Bibliography
Looman, Carolyn. EE-I-L-17
Moore, Rebecca. “Introduction.” Essay. In Peoples Temple and Jonestown in the 21st Century, 2–2. Cambridge, UnitedKingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
Wagner-Wilson, Leslie. “Chapter 8: Going Over Yonder.” Essay. In Slavery of Faith, 75–75. Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse,2009.
Wagner-Wilson, Leslie. 1/4/78, EE – I – UVWXYZ – 20
Notes
[1] Wagner-Wilson, Leslie. “Chapter 8: Going Over Yonder.” Essay. In Slavery of Faith, 75–75. Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2009.
[2] Wagner-Wilson, Leslie. 1/4/78, EE – I – UVWXYZ – 20
[3] Wagner-Wilson, Leslie. 1/4/78, EE – I – UVWXYZ – 20
[4]Moore, Rebecca. “Introduction.” Essay. In Peoples Temple and Jonestown in the 21st Century, 2–2. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
[5]Moore, Rebecca. “Introduction.” Essay. In Peoples Temple and Jonestown in the 21st Century, 2–2. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2022.
[6] Looman, Carolyn. EE-I-L-17