Jesus Land

JS: Surreal. I arrived on a Saturday, and the girls in my former dormitory had failed house inspection and were scrubbing the floors on their hands and knees like so many Cinderellas—the same hideous tile floors I spent days scrubbing 20 years earlier. I saw the misery in their faces and the housefather strutting around between them barking orders and I wanted to say something along the lines of "after surviving this hellhole, you'll be strong enough to survive anything," but I was quickly ushered out after snapping a few photographs of the building.

Returning to the school also gave me a sense of triumph. Escuela Caribe was a place that terrified me while I was there and that still gives me nightmares. It was great to go back as an adult and successful journalist. The underlying message of my visit was "Look at me, I thrived despite your best efforts to break me."

JS: Chilly. As a Christian young woman, the worst sin you can commit—short of murder—is to loose your maidenhood. This is emphasized with girls much more than with boys—one of the sexist double standards of the Church. My mother refused to look me in the eye for a long time after I was caught fornicating with my high school boyfriend.

After I graduated high school at Escuela Caribe, they didn't want me home, so they signed me up for an outfit called "Teen Missions," and I spent the summer in Portugal building missionary housing before starting classes at a tiny Christian college in Indiana.

RG: I saw on your website that you’ve been excommunicated from your childhood church, and on another site you mention that you no longer consider yourself a Christian. Have you found another religion or faith?

JS: No, I haven't. I have no need for religion, or even "spirituality." Kinda funny, considering there was a time when I was brainwashed into thinking that anyone who wasn't Christian was inherently immoral and untrustworthy. But the hypocrisy of the Christian staff at Escuela Caribe cured me of such dogma. Today, if I were forced to choose a label, I'd categorize myself as a secular humanist. I try to treat people with the same respect I desire from them.

RG: How has your opinion of institutional religion evolved since returning to the States?

JS: I think the rise of Christian nationalism in this country—that the United States is somehow ordained to lead the world toward democracy and enlightenment—is a truly scary trend.

RG: While you were away in the Dominican Republic, your brother, Jerome, was arrested. How is he doing today?

JS: Not well. I've had no contact with him for the past 18 years. I do check the Tippecanoe County Courthouse website every now and again to keep up with his latest criminal endeavor. Last time I checked, he was jailed for failing to pay child support. Before that, he was fired from McDonald's, where he was on work release. His lot in life really hasn't improved much, unfortunately.

RG: Your brother, David, passed away not long after the two of you returned to the States. Does the fact that you’ve now recorded your relationship—and that so many people are reading about it—help assuage the pain you felt at his death?

JS: Absolutely. David was writing about the events in Jesus Land at the time he died. After his funeral, I found a green notebook among his belongings where he'd sketched out the beginnings of his autobiography. (Thus the trompe l'oeil book cover). He was writing about growing up black in a white household, about the fundamentalist and racist subculture we lived in, and about Escuela Caribe. He had an unbeatable sense of humor despite all his hardships, and it shines through in his writing.

I wrote "Jesus Land" as a tribute to him, as a way of both preserving his memory and setting the record straight.

RG: Despite the abuse you experienced in your childhood, your book is remarkably devoid of bitterness or malice. How have you managed to gain distance from the initial trauma you suffered?

JS: I think two things influenced the tone of my book. First, I'm a journalist and trained to keep a cool eye on my subject matter, to write with dispassion. The events and the actions of the people in my book were damning enough presented on their own—there was no need to pound the reader over the head by providing a running commentary on what was happening. That said, I must admit I wrote several angry drafts before reaching the right pitch. Angry writing just sounds whiny, which is annoying.

RG: In England, your book is titled Another Hour on a Sunday Morning. What does this title convey that Jesus Land does not? Do you prefer one to the other?

JS: The English publisher feared that with a title like Jesus Land, readers would assume— ironically—that it was a religious tract and brush it off. Apparently the English are both fascinated and appalled by American Puritanism. I like my original title, but hey, they know their market better than I do.

RG: I should mention that another effect your book is having is to reunite former attendees of schools run by New Horizon Youth Ministries, which include Escuela Caribe. What do you hope will come from these reestablished ties?

JS: Healing. We share a singular experience as alumni of New Horizons. It's hard to explain "the program" to people who've had a normal adolescence. What it's like to be stripped of your freedoms and forced to ask permission to eat, to sit, or walk across a room. The terror of being woken by a referee whistle blast at 2 a.m. and made to do calisthenics for hours while your housefather berates you for being "bad Christians." The sick helplessness of watching the beefy Dean of Students beat up a puny, headstrong boy in a public boxing match, then kneel to pray over him.

Despite our age differences, we can commiserate completely. We are survivors of the same monstrous institution. We've even created a website to make our stories public: www.nhym-alumni.org.

A group of us is planning a reunion soon, and it won't be at our Alma Mater. It'll be in Vegas.