Status Updates From False Prophet

‘“Her being involved in Jonestown, using Jonestown as a means of escape, going to Jonestown . . . none of that’s true. My mom was an ordinary girl who became an ordinary woman. She saw her life, and her son’s, as ordinary.”

[...]

But her face remained calm, ponderous, until she finally said, “Because, Jal, the thing is, it doesn’t feel made up.”’

The cringe is so real 😬

“She was, her mom told her in a dozen daily sighs, a failure of a daughter. A daughter, her mother thought, was a source of potential shame. It was a daughter’s responsibility to spend the best years of her life avoiding this shame. And in every way possible, her only daughter—anything but contrite, anything but meek and obedient and, above all, pure—had failed.”

Oh no

“Their two older brothers, Ramesh and Lakeram, had already moved out, to England, which had always been a fantasy pilgrimage for them: to leave Guyana, the colony, and make a life for themselves among the onetime colonizers. This wasn’t how they would have put it, but it was how Rita put it to them before they left.”

👁️👄👁️

‘...growing up in Phoenix, I’d often heard my Uncle Arjune tell coworkers and curious grocery store clerks where he was from. When they raised their eyebrows, like Justin did now, my uncle would explain that Guyana was the country where Jim Jones took his followers—Jonestown, the Peoples Temple, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid”—and this was often the only reference point his audience needed.’

😐