The Other Wes Moore (book review)
Wes Moore, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. Random House, 2011
Review by Sherry Reames
Wes Moore was not yet governor of Maryland when he wrote this book, but his career was clearly full of promise. In the decade since his college graduation, he had won a Rhodes Scholarship for further study at Oxford, served with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, been chosen as a White House Fellow, and even given one of the speeches at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. As he explains in his introduction, the book originated when he learned about another young Black man named Wes Moore, approximately the same age and from a similar neighborhood, who was awaiting trial for murder. Struck by the coincidences, the author started corresponding with “the other Wes” and got his permission to interview people who knew him well and tell their stories side by side. The book begins with this powerful passage:
“This is the story of two boys living in Baltimore with similar histories and an identical name: Wes Moore. One of us is free and has experienced things that he never even knew to dream about as a kid. The other will spend every day until his death behind bars for an armed robbery that left a police officer and father of five dead. The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his. Our stories are obviously specific to our two lives, but I hope they will illuminate the crucial inflection points where our paths diverge and our fates are sealed. It’s unsettling to know how little separates each of us from another life altogether” (p. xi).
As this introduction suggests, the narrative focuses on “inflection points,” with each chapter juxtaposing the experiences of the author (“I”) with those of “Wes” during the most formative years of their young lives. In many ways they start from the same position: fatherless almost from the start (though for very different reasons), being raised by a hard-working single mother who does her best to keep them in school and safe from bad influences in their neighborhoods. But it was the 1980s, and the streets were full of young drug dealers who flaunted their expensive shoes and fine clothes, presenting a huge temptation to kids who desperately wanted to look cool and fit in. Even before their teens, both Wes Moores start getting into trouble – skipping school much of the time, failing their classes, getting into fights, already being picked up by the police. Both mothers make desperate efforts to get them back on the right path, but that proves to be harder than they imagine.
If my summary of the similarities makes these kids’ life stories sound overly predictable, trust me – they’re not! Both narratives are complex, richly detailed, and absorbing. I found myself rooting for the mothers and other relatives who intervened, trying to save these kids, and grieved when the kids made more and more bad choices. I won’t spoil the suspense by explaining what finally saved the successful Wes Moore, except to say that it took a lot more people than his mother to turn him around and start unleashing his potential. Here’s how he puts it in the Epilogue:
“What changed was that I found myself surrounded by people – starting with my mom, grandparents, uncles, and aunts, and leading to a string of wonderful role models and mentors – who kept pushing me to see more than was directly in front of me, to see the boundless possibilities of the wider world and the unexplored possibilities within myself. People who taught me that no accident of birth – not being black or relatively poor, being from Baltimore or the Bronx or fatherless – would ever define or limit me. In other words, they helped me to discover what it means to be free” (pp. 179-80).
The trajectory of the other Wes continued to spiral tragically downward, spurred partly by the fact that he left school too early and never found better role models and mentors. But of course it’s not that simple. In a final reflection on his book, added a year after its first publication, the author reflects that he hopes these two stories will encourage other youngsters to think seriously about taking control of their own destinies and will also encourage parents and mentors who are trying to raise kids in hostile environments.
The book was a New York Times best-seller when it came out, and it is still relevant to the needs of today. In an effort to make it even more useful, the paperback edition includes an extensive resource guide, identifying organizations across the country that are working to help young people discover their potential, and discussion questions suitable for classrooms or book groups. If your church or neighborhood is looking for a readable, enlightening book on race, poverty, and juvenile crime in the U.S., this would be a perfect choice.