{"id":68475,"date":"2017-01-06T15:19:34","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T23:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=68475"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:16:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T00:16:44","slug":"articles-by-sikivu-hutchinson","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=68475","title":{"rendered":"Articles by Sikivu Hutchinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson<\/strong> is an educator, author, and filmmaker. Her writing credits include Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels<\/a> and\u00a0Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her articles for the jonestown report<\/em> include:<\/p>\n

Staging White Nights, Black Paradise<\/em>\u2019s Virtual Performance at the Museum of the African Diaspora<\/a> (2020)<\/p>\n

Why BlackJonestown.org?<\/a> (2018)<\/p>\n

Memory Thieves: Beyond the White Gaze of Jonestown<\/a> (2017)<\/p>\n

Black Women\u2019s Film Confronts the Whitewashing of Jonestown<\/a> (2016)<\/p>\n

On White Negroes, Jim Jones and \u201cSista\u201d Rachel<\/a> (2015)<\/p>\n

No More White Saviors: Jonestown and Peoples Temple in the Black Feminist Imagination<\/a> (2014)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr. Hutchinson has written extensively on Jonestown and Peoples Temple for other publications as well, focusing primarily on the perspectives of black women within the organization. One of her first articles on the subject, “Why Did So Many Black Women Die?”, appeared in Religion Dispatches<\/a> in 2013. Her website blackjonestown.org<\/a> is devoted to giving voice to the experiences and social history of African American Peoples Temple and Jonestown members, victims and survivors.<\/p>\n

Her novel White Nights: Black Paradise<\/a> was published in November 2015\u00a0and reviewed by\u00a0LA Progressive<\/a>, Feminist Newswire<\/a>, Curve Magazine<\/a>, and PR Underground<\/a>. It was also reviewed by Annie Dawid<\/a> and Rebecca Moore<\/a> in the 2015 edition of the jonestown report<\/em>, and was included as one of four books reviewed in an essay by Annie Dawid<\/a> in the 2016 edition.<\/p>\n

Dr. Hutchinson discussed her book in a broadcast interview<\/a> on the \u201cOff-Ramp\u201d program on KPCC Public Radio in Southern California. Print interviews have appeared in the SF Bay View<\/a> African American newspaper (2016), and in Religion Dispatches<\/a> (2015).<\/p>\n

She also wrote a blog on the 2015 anniversary for The Huffington Post<\/a>. An article that uses her work as a point of departure into a discussion of other groups appears in a November 2015 article in The Atlantic Magazine\u2019s City Lab<\/a>.\u00a0Her earlier writings on Jonestown include her article in\u00a0Religion Dispatches<\/a>\u00a0(which also appeared on her\u00a0blogpost<\/a>) and a description of her book here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dr. Hutchinson has worked on transforming her novel into a film, which she described\u00a0in\u00a0an article<\/a>\u00a0in the 2016 edition of\u00a0the jonestown report<\/em>. An article about the film also appeared in the\u00a0Religion News Service<\/a>\u00a0in November 2016. Her interview of Jonestown survivor Leslie-Wagner Wilson appeared on November 17, 2016 in The Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2017, she organized a panel<\/a> of black women Jonestown survivors at San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD). Her reflections on the MoAD discussion appeared in The Huffington Post blog<\/a> in January 2018.<\/p>\n

Most recently, she developed a play adaptation of White Nights, Black Paradise <\/i>which had a Virtual Performance at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco in August 2020. Her description of the play, and four reviews of the performance, appear here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A discussion about Hutchinson’s works \u2013 her book, film and play \u2013 appeared in the LA Progressive<\/em><\/a> in the weeks leading up to the 40th anniversary of the deaths in Jonestown.<\/p>\n

She can be reached at shutch2396@aol.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson is an educator, author, and filmmaker. Her writing credits include Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels and\u00a0Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars. Her articles for the jonestown report include: Staging White Nights, Black Paradise\u2019s Virtual Performance at the Museum of the African Diaspora (2020) Why BlackJonestown.org? (2018) Memory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":16576,"menu_order":36,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-68475","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68475","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=68475"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134393,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68475\/revisions\/134393"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}