{"id":102337,"date":"2020-09-20T16:14:14","date_gmt":"2020-09-20T23:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=102337"},"modified":"2022-04-14T11:57:20","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T18:57:20","slug":"we-deserved-better","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=102337","title":{"rendered":"<em>White Nights, Black Paradise<\/em>:  We Deserved Better"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am a Black woman who spent several years in Peoples Temple as a teenager. I escaped going to Jonestown by leaving the Temple altogether rather than travel down to Guyana when I was ordered to. So many of my friends and relatives did not escape, though.<\/p>\n<p>In many ways, then, the dramatic production\u00a0<em>White Nights, Black Paradise: The Play<\/em> was supposed to be about me, my sister, and my girlfriends.<\/p>\n<p>To put it mildly, I was insulted by what I witnessed. I\u2019m tired of the African American women of Peoples Temple characterized and portrayed with misinformation. The Black women of Peoples Temple would <em>never<\/em> use the kind of language as a norm that was blasted in that play. They were not inarticulate. They could actually speak a sentence without the use of profanity. I kept watching, hoping it would get better. It didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>I understand that the playwright is on the outside looking in, and has had limited contact from Black women from Peoples Temple. However, she could have done a better portrayal. I literally whispered to my loved ones, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, guys,\u201d after five minutes into it.<\/p>\n<p>Muting the audience was a good decision, because they\u2019d have needed to end the meeting if I got word in. It was boring, and the articulation was demeaning. The conversation afterwards gave me a headache.<\/p>\n<p>I hope the next project does a better job portraying the Black people of Peoples Temple.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Glenda Randolph Bates was the sister of Darlene Ramey, who died in Jonestown.\u00a0Glenda&#8217;s numerous articles\u00a0for this site appear\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=17023\">here<\/a>. She died on March 29, 2022 from pancreatic cancer.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am a Black woman who spent several years in Peoples Temple as a teenager. I escaped going to Jonestown by leaving the Temple altogether rather than travel down to Guyana when I was ordered to. So many of my friends and relatives did not escape, though. In many ways, then, the dramatic production\u00a0White Nights, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":102488,"menu_order":44,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-102337","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102337"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114147,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102337\/revisions\/114147"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}