What Kind of Bird Can't Fly: A Memoir of Resilience and Resurrection

by Dorsey Nunn, Jeremy (Midnite) Michael Durm (Narrator), Lee Romney - with

A decade behind bars spurs fifty powerful years of political and legal battles for freedom and human rights.

When Dorsey Nunn shuffled, shackled like a slave, into the California State carceral system at age nineteen, he could barely read. While caged he received an education he never could have anticipated. His first Prison had a color scheme, and it didn't match the larger society. On the inside, guards stoked racial warfare among prisoners while on the outside the machinery of the criminal legal system increasingly targeted poor Black and Brown communities with offenses, real or contrived. Nunn emerged from San Quentin after ten years behind bars, radicalized by his experience and emboldened by the militant wisdom of the men he met there. He poured his heart and mind into liberating all those he left behind, building a nationwide movement to restore justice to millions of system-impacted Americans.

In this poignant, wry, and powerful memoir, Nunn links the politics of Black Power to the movements for Black lives and dignified reentry today. His story underscores the power of coalition building, persistence in the face of backlash, and the importance of centering the voices of experience in the fight for freedom-and proves, once and for all, that jailbirds can fly.

Audible Audio

Published June 11, 2024

Reviews

[Dee Lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

There may not be another person who has done more to improve the lives of California prison inmates and formerly incarcerated. Dorsey has been a reformer both in San Quentin and after his release. This is a powerful story. I know most of it to be true.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What Kind of Bird Can’t Fly is simultaneously a seething criticism of America’s incarceration system, complete with firsthand stories about the violence and destruction within prison walls, and a portrait of how a person with the right support system and self-determination can truly change and find redemption. It’s also, as Nunn writes in the preface, an inspiring story about "camaraderie, commitment, and grassroots organizing."
You can read the rest of my review in Hippocampus Magazine: https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2024/...

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent memoir of Nunn's life from childhood to prison, through drug addition and redemption, to using his experiences to help others. It is irreverent, the style is direct and self critical but throughout his life is a microcosm of race and inequity in America.

[Julie Grimes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book shows what restorative justice can look like when formerly incarcerated people come together for positive change. Dorsey Nunn. is an example of rising above your past to excel in a world most often content to punish rather than transform.

[Aramis Watts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful & Necessary. Nunn’s story of redemption and his collective fight for freedom and humanity was raw and unfiltered. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️