Online event today: Jonestown survivor Eugene Smith's life-affirming memoir and message for today's America
Dear Blue Ear Books subscribers,
As you know if you’ve read my messages over recent weeks, I was Eugene Smith’s collaborator on his memoir Back to the World: A Life after Jonestown, published by TCU Press. This is a personal appeal, if you’re free this evening, to attend the online discussion between Eugene and Prof. Christopher Fisher of The College of New Jersey, hosted by the wonderful Princeton Public Library.
Eugene’s story is an extraordinary and important one, and his voice is one of - as Prof. William L. Andrews put it so well - badly needed “life-affirming prophetic witness” for today’s America. To know just why and how that’s so - well, attend the event and buy and read Eugene’s book! The title, by the way, echoes a 1973 song and album by Curtis Mayfield, about a Black veteran returning from Vietnam.
Info below. The event is today, Wednesday, February 23, at 7 pm U.S. Eastern Time, 6 pm Central Time, 5 pm Mountain Time, 4 pm Pacific Time. I’ll be there.
Feb 23 virtual author event: A gripping American story of survival
“Eugene Smith’s compelling autobiography testifies to the author’s tenacious, long-term struggle to survive the soul-searing effects of the Jonestown tragedy and to forge a life-affirming prophetic witness in the aftermath.” - William L. Andrews, Adams Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Join Eugene Smith, author of Back to the World: A Life after Jonestown (whose collaborator was Blue Ear Books publisher Ethan Casey; published by TCU Press) for a virtual event hosted by the Princeton Public Library at 7pm ET/4pm PT on Wednesday, February 23, 2022.
Register here to attend the event, or visit the Princeton Public Library’s calendar listing. Here is the library’s text promoting the event:
Author Eugene Smith discusses his memoir Back to the World: A Life After Jonestownwith Christopher Fisher of The College of New Jersey’s history department.
Eugene Smith lost his mother, wife and infant son in the mass murder-suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, on Nov. 18, 1978. Repatriated by the U.S. authorities on New Year’s Eve, he broke a $50 bill stashed in his shoe to buy breakfast for himself and a fellow survivor. Approximately 70% of those who died at Jonestown were Black and yet Back to the World: A Life After Jonestown is the first book-length memoir of Peoples Temple by a Black man. The author will be in discussion with Christopher Fisher a faculty member in the history department at The College of New Jersey.
Returning to California at age 21, Smith faced the daunting challenge of building from scratch a meaningful and self-sufficient life in the American society he thought he had left behind. “My first responsibility as a survivor,” he writes, “was not to embarrass my mother or my wife or my child, and to set an example that can’t be questioned.” Smith’s story is that of a double survival: first of the destruction of the idealistic but tragically flawed Peoples Temple community, then of its aftermath.
Having survived, Smith has hard questions for today’s America. This is a memoir with powerful relevance to the deeply polarized America of today.