Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in The Peoples Temple
by Deborah Layton
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Book Summary Information
Author: Deborah LaytonEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-11-03
ISBN: 0385489838
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Doubleday/Anchor Books
Book Reviews of Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in The Peoples Temple
Book Review: Easy and interesting reading.Fast paced.
Summary: 4 Stars
Everybody who wants to know why people join cults and how to prevent future Jonestowns and Wacos and Rwandas and Sabra and Shatilas and Holocausts and Bosnias and Pol Pots and etc should read this book: Accepted self-hate in our own lives leads us to go looking for Love for ourselves in all the wrong places and from all the wrong people except from ourselves and in ourselves: it is God who teaches us how to love ourselves and how to give love to ourselves: by loving us as Himself! So for instance, those who hate Jim Jones will tend to end up repeating exactly what they condemn. That is exactly what JJ himself did when he learned to hate himself and so to hate others: There are none so forgetful as those who hate to remember and so *will* not to remember. They won't so they can't. Jim Jones forgot himself. The George Santayna quote:'Those who *can* not remember the past are condemned to repeat it' is the very quote that is in the background of Leo Ryan the night before his death, with the Jim Jones' premeditated lessening of 'can' to 'do.'! The followers of JJ were trying to get love from a man who not only had a little love for himself but who also had lots of hate for himself: so he himself could not help but only love others a little and hate them a lot. See xviii, 71 and 260. As a Guyanese who visited Port Kaituma and its environs, I can only deeply sympathize with all the Americans who followed Jim Jones to Guyana: Pure 90% hate[their inner atmospherics] and the outer ambience of heavy rain, mud, heat and all the things and animals on p.172 and more made a green hell out of a paradise that needed Love to make it the living Promised Land. As a Guyanese I knew that the Guyanese Govt at that time wanted occupation of that area as a buffer vs Venezueala's claims, but the author adds to my knowledge when she wrote that Jom Jones also suggested that very idea as a reason why the govt should let him in. See p.127. So both sides conspired to put Jonestown in the worse place possible for people, especially Americans,to live. After reading this book, I want to also apologize for any of the ways that we Guyanese may have contibuted to the misery of the visitors to the land of El Dorado. I know that we were not to blame, but as people from the Country of Hospitality we want to take any responsibilty that is ours for the inhospitable conditions which made tjhat area a living hell and lent to the final tragedy. I was also very sorry to hear of the fate of fellow-Guyanese Bunny Mann. Please also know that the Guyanese pilots who fled the airport after the assault at the airstrip were terrified at the danger: 99% of the Guyanese population have never even held a gun: at least 99% of Guyanese of my generation. This is in ref to Charles Krause's experience after being shot. The net result of the flight of the pilots was that Charles was the first American journalist on the scene of the suicide site. I am sure that more than made up for the injury, Charles. The author does great word pictures on most of the chaacters. I also wish that the author had indexed the book. Anyway, it is a great read: read it straight for 2 days! Wish I could talk to the author.
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Summary of Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in The Peoples Temple
Twenty years ago, on November 18, 1978 in Jonestown, a commune in the depths of the Guyanese jungle, 913 followers of the Reverend Jim Jones obeyed his orders to take their own lives, dutifully swallowing fruit-flavored punch laced with cyanide. It was the worst mass suicide in modern history. The Peoples Temple had started out years before as a respectable church involved in community service and civil rights activism. Jim Jones's followers grew in number, and the organization gained prominence in the San Francisco community, recognized by such high-profile figures as Mayor George Moscone and First Lady Rosalyn Carter. But by the time Jones and his followers had begun their emigration to the "promised land" in Guyana, the group had become increasingly militant and paranoid.Deborah Layton saw that something was seriously wrong the minute she arrived in Jonestown, and six months before the massacre, she escaped the guarded compound she had imagined would be paradise. Her warnings to the press and to the U.S. State Department of an impending disaster fell on disbelieving ears: Exactly four days after her testimony in Washington, D.C., Congressman Leo Ryan, three reporters, and over nine hundred Peoples Temple members, including Layton's mother and countless friends, were dead. Layton's return to the world outside of the Peoples Temple was slow and painful. Her brother remains in prison, the only person alive today held accountable for the tragedy. After years of shame and silence, she is finally telling her story.
From Waco to Heaven's Gate, the past decade has seen its share of cult tragedies, but none quite so dramatic or compelling as Jonestown. In this very personal account, Layton opens up the shadowy world of cults that pervade our existence and shows how any race, culture, or class of individuals can fall victim to a cult's strange allure. Vividly written and powerfully told, Seductive Poison is both an unflinching historical document and an enthralling story of intrigue, power, and murder.
Deborah Layton was, by her own account, a typical rebellious youth, with nothing in her dossier to indicate that she would eventually find herself in Jim Jones's People's Temple in Guyana, looking for a way out of the green hell that had become the People's Temple Agricultural Project. She barely escaped in June 1978. Within months, more than 900 people drank Jones's cyanide punch and committed "revolutionary suicide" in the face of mounting stateside pressure on the cult, some of it prompted by Layton's own testimonials upon her safe return home. Her brother, Larry, also survived, and as one of the few left alive in Guyana became a scapegoat for Jones's crimes; he is now serving a life sentence in federal prison.
There is a simple naiveté at the root of Seductive Poison. Layton's own youthful innocence, foremost, but also the desire to trust another person, the need for belonging and meaning, which led so many perfectly normal Americans to place their faith in a suicidal madman. Far from confirming the simplistically monstrous Jones of the public imagination, Layton paints the man as a dark, twisted shaman, by turns soothing, then suddenly malevolent and petty, with a hugely sadistic streak that belied his perfectly coifed hair, expensive suits, and impressive political connections. The scenes in which she describes her escape and flight to safety are wrenching, her last-minute conversation with Jones and his seductive appeal for her to return home to Jonestown are chilling, and her fear and indecision are still palpable on the printed page. For Layton to recount tales this personal and horrifying must have been tremendously difficult. For her to lift those recollections above the bargain-basement freak-show reputation the People's Temple has achieved in the popular imagination and depict them with the power of great tragedy is nothing but extraordinary. --Tjames Madison
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