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That Bird Has My Wings

The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

The New York Times Bestseller

Oprah's Book Club Pick 2022

That Bird Has My Wings is a moving memoir of a Death Row inmate who discovers Buddhism and becomes an inspirational role model for fellow inmates, guards, and a growing public.

""When I think about the fact that society, a nation, has sentenced me to death, all I can do is turn inside myself, to the place in my heart that wants so desperately to feel human, still connected to this world, as if I have a purpose.""

In 1990, while serving a sentence in San Quentin for armed robbery, Jarvis Jay Masters was implicated as an accessory in the murder of a prison guard. A 23-year-old Black man, Jarvis was sentenced to death in the gas chamber. While in the maximum security section of Death Row, using the only instrument available to him—a ball-point pen filler—Masters's astounding memoir is a testament to the tenacity of the human spirit and the talent of a fine writer.

Offering us scenes from his life that are at times poignant, revelatory, frightening, soul-stirring, painful, funny and uplifting, That Bird Has My Wings tells the story of the author's childhood with parents addicted to heroin, an abusive foster family, a life of crime and imprisonment, and the eventual embracing of Buddhism. Masters's story drew the attention of luminaries in the world of American Buddhism, including Pema Chodron, who wrote a story about him for O Magazine and offers a foreword to the book.

Thirty-two years after his conviction, Masters is still on Death Row. A growing movement of people believe Masters is innocent, and are actively working within the legal system to free him.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 31, 2009
      In this polished tale that belies the author's raw origins, Masters (Finding Freedom
      ), who has been imprisoned on San Quentin's death row since 1990 and become a devout Buddhist, recalls the neglect, abuse and cycle of crime and hopelessness that relegated him to prison by age 19. As a child in the late '60s, Masters and his siblings were shut up in their house in Long Beach, Calif., because their mother and stepfather had turned the place into a heroin den. Filthy, starved and whipped, the children eventually attracted the attention of neighbors, then were scattered among foster homes. Despite a happy period spent with a caring, elderly Christian couple, Jarvis was once again uprooted, this time to a hardened, joyless home where the other foster boys quickly taught him the ropes to survive. Dispirited, he ran away repeatedly from age 10 on, and the book largely follows his trajectory from one institution to the next, from McLaren Hall, where he enjoyed a sense of belonging, to the abusive Valley Boys Academy, where he was trained like a pitbull to fight the other boys. Being united with his extended family in Harbor City was both a blessing and a curse, because they gradually dragged him into a downward spiral of robbery, violence and jail. Masters's claim of innocence in the murder that landed him on death row is beside the point in this work that's a frank, heartfelt rendering of a young life that should have mattered.

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  • English

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