
That Bird Has My Wings
The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row
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Narrated by:
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Korey Jackson
About this listen
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.
©2009 Jarvis Jay Masters (P)2022 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
It is spring 1919, and John Sawtelle’s imagination has gotten him into trouble … again. Now John and his newlywed wife, Mary, along with their two best friends and their three dogs, are setting off for Wisconsin’s northwoods, where they hope to make a fresh start—and, with a little luck, discover what it takes to live a life of meaning, purpose and adventure. But the place they are headed for is far stranger and more perilous than they realize, and it will take all their ingenuity, along with a few new friends—human, animal, and otherworldly—to realize their dreams.
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A great story!
- By gypsietraveler on 10-25-24
By: David Wroblewski
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The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s problem on her shoulders.
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The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
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Hello Beautiful
- A Novel
- By: Ann Napolitano
- Narrated by: Maura Tierney
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him—so when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano in his freshman year of college, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family, as she and her three sisters are inseparable: Sylvie, the family’s dreamer, is happiest with her nose in a book; Cecelia is a free-spirited artist; and Emeline patiently takes care of them all.
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Book was great, performance terrible
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-23
By: Ann Napolitano
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Behold the Dreamers
- A Novel
- By: Imbolo Mbue
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself; his wife, Neni; and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty - and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses' summer home in the Hamptons.
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Overhyped
- By Rochelle on 08-27-16
By: Imbolo Mbue
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Bittersweet
- How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
- By: Susan Cain
- Narrated by: Susan Cain
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she employs the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, connection, and transcendence.
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I REALLY wanted to love this book!
- By Leo B. on 05-02-22
By: Susan Cain
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Dream State
- A Novel
- By: Eric Puchner
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her in-laws’ beautiful lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a medical student with a brilliant future. Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate, though Cece can’t imagine anyone less appropriate for the task; Garrett doesn’t believe in love, much less marriage. But as she spends time with Garrett, and his gruff mask slips, her long-held expectations for her life with Charlie begin to crumble, her feelings for Garrett—haunted by a tragic event from his past—become impossible to bury.
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An Enthralling Listen
- By Regina on 02-20-25
By: Eric Puchner
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The Sun Does Shine
- By: Anthony Ray Hinton, Lara Love Hardin, Bryan Stevenson - foreword
- Narrated by: Bryan Stevenson - foreword, Kevin R. Free
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only 29 years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with an incompetent defense attorney and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in despairing silence.
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DOWN WITH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT!!!
- By MUDDBONE on 04-29-18
By: Anthony Ray Hinton, and others
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The Buddhist on Death Row
- How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place
- By: David Sheff
- Narrated by: Michael Boatman
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
At the time of his murder trial, Jarvis Jay Masters was in solitary confinement and spent 22 years in a five-foot-by-11-foot cell. This is where The Buddhist on Death Row takes off. With uncanny clarity, David Sheff describes Masters’ path to enlightenment - from being sullen and violent to discovering how easy and how hard it is to just sit and breathe, how those minutes spawn heightened perception and deepened compassion, the right way to remember one’s pain, and much more.
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Really opened my eyes
- By MgnSanchez on 08-09-20
By: David Sheff
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The Many Lives of Mama Love
- A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
- By: Lara Love Hardin
- Narrated by: Lara Love Hardin
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
No one expects the police to knock on the door of the million-dollar two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards. Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She finds that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. But Lara quickly learns the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates.
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Well written and great story
- By A. Champ on 09-02-23
By: Lara Love Hardin
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Hidden Valley Road
- Inside the Mind of an American Family
- By: Robert Kolker
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.
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A story you've never heard before
- By Kelley Cox on 04-19-20
By: Robert Kolker
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American Dirt
- A Novel
- By: Jeanine Cummins
- Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
- Length: 16 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. When Lydia’s husband’s tell-all profile of Javier, the jefe of the newest drug cartel that has gruesomely taken over the city, is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
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Completely unrealistic
- By Marlene L Marquez on 02-12-20
By: Jeanine Cummins
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Love Warrior
- A Memoir
- By: Glennon Doyle
- Narrated by: Glennon Doyle
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Just when Glennon Doyle Melton was beginning to feel she had it all figured out - three happy children, a doting spouse, and a writing career so successful that her first book catapulted to the top of the New York Times best seller list - her husband revealed his infidelity and she was forced to realize that nothing was as it seemed. A recovering alcoholic and bulimic, Glennon found that rock bottom was a familiar place. In the midst of crisis, she knew to hold on to what she discovered in recovery: that her deepest pain has always held within it an invitation to a richer life.
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A good examination of Pain, Hope and Love.
- By Kelly on 10-04-16
By: Glennon Doyle
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The Water Dancer (Oprah’s Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 14 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her - but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North.
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We Must Always Remember
- By Cammie on 09-28-19
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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The Underground Railroad (Television Tie-in)
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.
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Stupendous book, hard to follow in audio
- By JQR on 12-01-16
By: Colson Whitehead
A Human Survival Narrative
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Sad
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Great read
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Tragic and honest
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thoroughly enjoyed
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Amazingly well written
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Beautiful Story
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What You Don’t Correct - You Become
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A Worthy Read
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Amazing story
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