Reviews
That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row by Jarvis Jay Masters
sanmeow's review against another edition
emotional
sad
medium-paced
4.5
so emotionally impactful that i think trying to actually speak on that impact isn't necessary. just read it, yknow. anyway, this made me feel a lot, and i also thought the book was very well written, especially for a memoir. i wouldn't reread it because it's very heavy, but i'm happy that i read it.
pdez26's review against another edition
4.75
I couldn’t put this book down. It’s authentic, disturbing, inspiring, and enlightening. Free Jarvis.
divyasudhakar's review against another edition
2.0
It's a perfectly good book, just not my kind of book and I had to force myself to finish it. I felt a little bit like it was an accounting of big and small life events that felt a little disjointed. Given that the author has very little formal training, I don't hold it against him much.
madisonmila's review against another edition
5.0
A really powerful memoir. Would definitely recommend.
jritter4's review against another edition
4.0
"I tried to envision myself as Bork's mother or father, or sister or brother, and even as Bork as a child. It was scary to be without the ground of a righteous stand, floating in a cesspool of pain and suffering. Still, for all those days, I continued to sit and invoke my prayers of compassion. Then gradually, for just seconds at a time, I was able to feel the sickness so deep and absolute that it could cause a human being like Bork to prey upon children. In the beginning, the sickness I imagined repulsed me. I couldn't take too much. I felt as if I was undergoing spiritual chemotherapy, attached to an intravenous tube that dripped poison into my veins. But as I breathed slowly in and out, absorbed by my anger toward Bork, I saw all the things I didn't want to see. On the screen between my closed eyes, I saw my own anger. I saw the viciousness of my own anger, like those people I sometimes see on TV who have no compassion. I was ugly. Shaken. No good to myself. The structure of my face had changed. All the thin frown lines seemed permanent. And the muscles were as tight as clenched fists. To have dedicated my spiritual practice to see the end of suffering, and then to see I still had these very ugly feelings of hatred, and the wish to kick someone's teeth in, shamed me to the core. 'Damn,' I though, as one angry feeling was replaced by another, 'this isn't good.' It seemed like all my righteous anger hadn't helped me, Bork, or anyone else. Then, a bigger feeling came through as I plugged into all the other human suffering throughout the world. Why hadn't I seen Bork as part of it? Why hadn't I seen myself as part of it here in this prison? In the whole world? I felt a mental clarity that lifted me above all the clouds of my own making. When I got a visit from one of my Darma teachers, and spent the whole visit explaining my Bork ordeal in detail, I experienced another profound awakening. My teacher said, "Jarvis, that very same anger and rage you felt in your heart at the beginning, that is what almost everybody out in society is feeling about you. All those people who believe in capital punishment and who are screaming for executions." I sat there speechless, shocked by it all. But it was true. I live here on death row, alongside Bork. My hatred for Bork now turned its face on me."