Jarvis Jay Masters

Jarvis Jay Masters is a former foster care youth and long time inmate on Death Row in San Quentin Prison. His story is now getting a lot of attention since Oprah chose his book That Bird Has My Wings for her book club. Rebecca Solnit has also taken up his cause and his Buddhist choice for sustenance has brought him additional attention. It may seem strange with so much attention given to his situation that I am only just now learning about him but I had read a book some months, maybe a year ago, about how unequal our criminal justice system is and how overwhelmingly unfair to black men. And as part of my learning about all things adoption, foster care has also come to my awareness many times.

He was born in 1962 in Long Beach, California. At the age of five, after watching his father almost beat his mother to death, while he tried to keep his sisters safe, he was taken by the system from her. The children were living in filth and hunger when they were finally found. Someone (perhaps the old lady who set out food for them) reported them to the cops, who brought in social services. The sight of how ragged their clothes were then led social services into their house. The situation was so bad they were removed from both the house and their parents.

This is how from the age of five, he was in and out of foster homes and institutions, enduring violence and trauma in a system meant to provide some measure of protection for him. Here is the story of one such memory of the kind of care he was receiving.

One morning when he was nine, while eating breakfast and hating the yolk from the fried eggs he had been fed. As he usually did, he went to dump that into the trash without his foster mother knowing he had done that. Only this time her daughter saw him. At the trash can, he was met by his foster mother’s hand as she hit his face. She had slapped him so hard, his ears rang and he could taste blood bubbling in his mouth. After that, she grabbed his head and stuffed his face down into the garbage, all the while yelling at him to find the eggs and eat them. During this abuse, he passed out.

I will make a long story shorter (you can read much more at the LINK> to the Free Jarvis website) – he ended up at the California Youth Authority, the last stop before adult prison. After his release, he soon found himself sentenced to 20 years in San Quentin Prison at the age of 19. Hooking up with a childhood friend of his uncle’s, he was involved in an armed robbery trying to grab sacks of money being collected by a store employee from the registers. He says, the whole scene was a disaster and in less than a day later, there were warrants out for their arrest, even charging them with crimes in towns he had never even heard of. Even so, he actually felt lucky to have been caught and thereby stopped as his life had spun so far out of control.

Four years after entering prison, a guard was killed and he was one of three charged in that crime. He was innocent as all of the other prisoners were well aware but a jury found him guilty of a conspiracy to murder and he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. That is why he has spent more than 21 years in solitary confinement, which longer than any other prisoner in San Quentin history. A woman judge was assigned to the case, and this brought back memories that he had a woman judge the first time he was taken away from his mother.

When he was a child, he had been made a ward of the state as they told him, they only wanted to protect him but never did. Now, he found himself in the same kind of room, with dim buzzing lights, as the law was deciding how to kill him. He describes that life in San Quentin – “To find home in San Quentin I had to summon an unbelievable will to survive. The roaches, the filth plastered on the walls, the dirt balls on the floor, and the awful smell of urine left in the toilet for God knows how long sickened me nearly to the point of passing out.”

Now his Buddhism and his legal case, thanks to his writings, have made him a bit of a celebrity, perhaps on the verge of finally being acquitted, or at least pardoned, and released into freedom as a changed man with so much to offer others in similar circumstances to the ones his life brought him into. Wisdom gained at a great price.

Hard Times Don’t Come Around No More

Both of my parents were Great Depression babies – born 1935 and 1937. For that fact alone, it isn’t a wonder they both ended up adopted, though the reasons are much more complicated than that. But certainly, financial hardship in the lives of my two original grandmothers is the key factor.

So this is on my mind this morning after watching Angela’s Ashes on dvd last night and being reminded of the song – Hard Times Don’t Come Around No More written by Stephen Foster and published in 1854. Some of the lyrics – While we all sup sorrow with the poor, Many a days you have lingered around my cabin door, There are frail forms fainting at the door, Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say, There’s a pale weeping maiden who toils her life away, With a worn heart whose better days are o’er: Though her voice would be merry, ’tis sighing all the day, Oh! Hard times come again no more.

So what was it like in the 1930s ?, was a question on my mind this morning. The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in modern history at the time it occurred. It profoundly affected the daily life of American families in ways large and small. The bleakest point was about 1933 or 34.

The life of a child in the 1930s was very different than a child’s life today. With the Great Depression, children and their families were greatly impacted—millions lived in poverty and had very little to eat, let alone money to spare for entertainment. Times were tough everywhere, and an additional mouth to feed was a burden. Certainly, I believe that both of my grandmothers encountered this mind set when they were seeking aid with their newborn babies.

Food was scarce for a lot of families and many children suffered from malnutrition. As we were watching children die in Angela’s Ashes my husband said, it is the lack of nutrition that makes it impossible for them to fight off diseases.

My maternal grandmother’s childhood family did live on a farm that was not ravaged by the Dust Bowl being west of Memphis in the rural countryside. They probably did grow a variety of crops and raised small amounts of livestock to survive. During the Depression, casseroles and meals like creamed chipped beef on toast, chili, macaroni and cheese, and creamed chicken on biscuits were popular. Jello was actually considered a cheap protein source (had to believe it would be viewed as that – one serving only has 1.6 grams of protein and the equivalent of 4-1/2 tsp of sugar !!) But Jello still found its way into many cookbooks during the Depression. Potlucks were often organized by churches to share food and provide a cheap form of social entertainment. The board games Scrabble and Monopoly were introduced during the 1930s. Both of which my own family has played recently.

Economic struggle caused mothers to leave the home for work and children to leave school for work as a breakdown in child labor law enforcement occurred. My paternal grandmother was put to work in the Rayon mills in Asheville NC to help support her family. A quarter of the US workforce was unemployed. Those that were lucky enough to have steady employment often saw their wages cut or their hours reduced to part-time. With record unemployment, children competed for jobs with their elders to help contribute to their family’s income, often forgoing further schooling. Many children were technically self-employed, collecting junk to sell or doing odd jobs for neighbors.

The stress of financial strain took a psychological toll—especially on men who were suddenly unable to provide for their families. The national suicide rate rose to an all-time high in 1933. Marriages became strained, though many couples could not afford to separate. Some men deserted their families out of embarrassment or frustration: This was sometimes called a “poor man’s divorce.” So, was this what my paternal grandfather chose when faced with yet another child on the way ? Is this why he failed to show up for my grandmother and mom when they returned to Memphis after her birth in Virginia (where she was sent away to avoid embarrassment for her father, even though she really was a married woman).

Disadvantaged families couldn’t afford much for their children, so most of their clothes were cast offs and children often went barefoot. Most middle-income boys wore t-shirts with overalls and girls wore blouses and plain dresses. Both would have one pair of shoes and an outfit for special occasions. The Depression-era motto was: “Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.” I definitely saw these effects in the lives of my in-laws (both born in 1921) and on my dad’s adoptive parents.

Is It Really ?

One hears this a lot from people who want to adopt a baby – “I applaud you for your courageous choice to give your daughter a chance at a better future. There are so many women with infertility issues like myself who would love to adopt a child. Please keep me in your thoughts if you know of other women in your situation. I have a lot of love to give.”

One cannot really say if being adopted gives anyone a “better life”. Both of my parents were adopted. They both would have grown up with some degree of poverty had they remained with their original mothers. And the truth of the matter is, my dad still grew up with some degree of poverty. In fact, he actually experienced food insecurity and hunger as a child. We always had more food on our table at dinner than we could eat. My mom told me that was the reason why. And my dad was so obese as an adult, he relished his nickname Fat Pat.

I do appreciate his adoptive parents. My granny was hugely influential in my life. We often spent days and weekends with her. A word from her that was very serious about some issue had the power to change the direction I was traveling in. Having learned my parents more or less full background stories, I believe had it not been for my granny, my teenage mother who conceived me out of wedlock, would have been sent away as so many girls in the 1950s through 1970s were, to have and give me up. I believe my dad’s adoptive parents insisted he do the right thing and quit college and go to work, after quickly marrying my mother so I would be born legitimate. And my nuclear family experienced hardships but we knew we were loved, even though our parents were strangely detached, having had their own familial bonds broken before the age of one year.

And how about my mother ? Her dad was the vice president at a large bank in downtown El Paso Texas. Her mother was a socialite and charity do-gooder. She was also influential in my own life for different reasons than my granny. She modeled for us good manners and good taste in home decor and clothing. However, my mom – while wanting for nothing of a financial basis – struggle with her adoptive mother. My grandmother was always thin and trim (she would starve herself if necessary, her mother and sister were quite rotund) and my mom’s body type was never going to be that – big boned Scottish farm girl stock that she was. My grandmother also dangled her wealth as a carrot and a stick over my mom.

My mom’s father was very poor and her mother’s family was also poor. My grandmother lost my mom when she gave birth while separated from her lawfully married husband during a massive flood on the Mississippi River. Unable to contact him for support or reconciliation, Georgia Tann along with her enablers the Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley and the Porter-Leath Orphanage supervisor Georgia Robinson (to whom my grandmother turned for temporary care while she tried to get on her feet financially without family support) exploited her financially precarious situation and coerced her into surrendering my mom for adoption. She tried to undo this 4 days after signing the papers but Tann was not letting my mom loose as her soon to be adoptive mother was already on her way from Nogales Arizona by train to Memphis Tennessee to collect her. My grandmother had previously adopted a son from Tann.

One cannot actually say my mom had a “better” life either. The truth about adoption is – the child has a DIFFERENT life from the one they would have had with their original parent(s). Better is a subjective concept that adoptive parents like to believe in order to justify taking a child, due to their own infertility, from another woman. It honestly is that simple.

A Difference In Perspective

Within adoption reform communities, there is a deep commitment and ongoing effort to do adoptive relationships in a manner that is focused on the well-being of the adopted child, who through no choice of their own is not with the parents who conceived nor the mother who gave birth to them.

So, here’s the story of two conflicting perspectives on “doing it right”.

My husband and I live in West Africa with our 5 children. We recently adopted twin 4 year old girls in December. These children were being raised by their single Aunt who could not take care of them any longer since she was also raising 6 additional children (her own and also from other siblings), so she surrendered them to an orphanage because their mother had nothing to do with them since they were 1 year old. Unfortunately, this is a pretty common scenario here in West Africa.

We talk often about their “first mom,” allow the twins to miss her and express sadness, assure them they are loved and wanted. We keep in contact with their Aunt and have recently developed an online relationship with their mother. I send pictures and video to their family several times a week so they are able to know how the twins are doing. The twins have been able to talk with their aunt, cousins, and mother on two occasions. My husband and I had hoped to keep this relationship alive so the girls always had a connection to their African family.

Recently I received very harsh criticism from an adult Native American adoptee who was adopted into a privileged white family at birth. She has no connection with her biological family and claims she has never had any questions about them because “her parents did it right.” She insisted that the way we are referring to their mother as “first mom” and the ongoing connection we are attempting to foster will create an identity crisis and undermine my parental authority as their adoptive mother. We are a Christian missionary family (as is she) and she also told me that she believes our behavior and language will cause them to question God and fall away from their faith because of the uncertainty we’ll cause. In her opinion, we need to “squash” the connection with their mother and start referring to her as “the woman who gave birth to you” and to me as your “only mom.” She was also concerned that the girls have “romanticized” their memories of their mom, making her seem better than she was to them.

There is so much attention now being paid to issues of racial inequality and identity that I am not surprised that the first comment was somewhat harsh but here goes –

You are the definition of white saviorism. The very fact that you are missionaries in another country trying to recruit locals to your culture and belief system is white colonization. I find it disgusting and harmful. As to your adoption, it’s sad for all those involved, especially for the twins.

And the original woman’s response –

I teach at an American Christian school for North American children who have parents living abroad either as missionaries, humanitarian workers, or for business. We actually do not interact with locals in the manner you are assuming. But, let me educate you on what happens here in West Africa to children whose parents cannot take care of them…. the lucky ones are given to “schools” that use these children as slaves, abuse them, and force them to beg on the streets for money usually shoeless and hungry. Others are taken out to remote villages and left to starve or sold as human sacrifices or into human trafficking. The fact that you make such a bold statement without knowing anything about what happens here just shows your own ignorance and first world privilege.

The criticism was gently affirmed by another woman –

What was brought up is a valid point. I think your heart is in the right place, but you should always be mindful of how your actions have potentially negatively affected your adopted daughters’ natural family.

In adoption reform circles, financial and other resource support for natural families and keeping children within their birth culture (which means ending transracial adoption, which is not the same is a mixed race family birthing mixed race children, to be clear on this point) is the direction that reformers are seeking in an effort to end the need for removing children from the biological and genetic families.

And finally, an adoptee shares –

As an adoptee ALL I wanted my entire childhood was to know who and where I came from. Since I had no answers I would make up stories about how my first mom was a famous actress etc etc. I found out later in life that many adoptees made up elaborate stories about their bio families. It was literally torturous to not know. I feel now that SO much was straight out stolen from me as a child. And for what purpose???

Since I had no answers about my own parents’ origins, I “made up” stories. My mom was half African-American – she was not. My dad was half Mexican – he was not. I would have preferred the reality and an opportunity to know those persons who I was genetically related to. My parent died without ever having that opportunity. Since I have recovered the knowledge of my genetic origins, I am thankful also to now know people I am actually related to by blood. It has healed to wholeness something that was previously broken within me – without denying the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins I knew as a child due solely to the adoptions of my parents.

Feeding With Love And Good Sense

My topic today started out being about foster parents who resent feeding their foster children. Of course, not all foster parents are that way but it seems that some are. It appears that some people foster solely as a source of extra income.

It is well known that foster children often have some very serious traumatic effects that cause them to display a variety of behaviors. Picky eating has been linked with psychiatric problems, including anxiety and symptoms of depression. The mental problems sometimes worsen as the picky eating becomes more severe. That untouched plate and look of disgust on your child’s face at mealtime might be a sign.

My older son was eating Salmon at 18 mos of age. This amazed my parents. At the time, I had read a book by Ellyn Satter titled Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense. Because of what I read in this book, when a family friend made a separate meal for her daughter, I thought it wrong but kept my judgement to myself. Satter advises – It is a parent’s job to put good quality food on the table. It is the child’s job to eat. And mostly I agree.

Except that along came my younger son. I believe he has texture issues. He also developed car sickness at only a few months of age, which we eventually treated with a preventive tincture of ginger and peppermint with definite success. There is no way you can force this kid to eat anything he doesn’t want to. He’ll simply throw up and we have so much experience with those outcomes in the car, we have no desire to cause more of them.

Even so, he is healthy and according to his pediatrician of normal weight. It’s hard to tell with kids while they are growing up. They bulk up and then shoot up. I do my best to provide him with nutritious meals – even though some could be questioned by dietary purists. And I do cook for him separately.

Even so, my kids are not traumatized. I simply cannot understand any person willing to take on the challenges of children who have ended up in foster care and then take a hard-hearted attitude towards feeding them.

Related statements from a foster parent –

“When you get a child that comes to you and their family was on food assistance etc. – which I have nothing against but when they say ‘I don’t eat leftovers’, it really erks me. We had to use assistance many years ago and the amount they give you, was more than needed. You could buy name brand everything and eat like kings. I just said, ‘we don’t have that luxury, we have to pay for our food. So you’re going to have to get used to it.’ And its only maybe twice a week and definitely, I am not making something just for her.”

Some additional comments from a couple of foster parents to the above –

“We’re not personal chefs. Prepare them for the real world.”

“Foster kids eat what they get. I serve the same thing until they eat it. If they don’t like it, they can go to bed hungry.”

Personally, I do NOT believe ANY child needs to go to bed hungry, if it can be avoided. Period. In my family, no one is forced to eat leftovers but thankfully, my husband thinks they make a great, quick lunch. One final note – this country has an obesity epidemic and the causes are multiple. However, I do believe that allowing children to only eat what they feel like eating, teaches them to read their body signals. In fact, in our household, only the main meal is served as a family. The other times we eat, is when our hunger drives us to seek satisfaction.