What to say about Wes Moore

The Other Wes Moore, a novel written by scholar Wes Moore, is a very interesting auto-biography/novel that tells the story of two children and how they grew up in the same broken town, identical names while ending up leading two entirely different lives.

The author, managed to grow and adjust to earn his life: first-time author, former Army combat veteran, youth advocate, former special assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a White House Fellow, speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and investment professional while the other Wes ended up following the same path as his brother-dropping out, drug hustling, just another casualty to our modern day stats. The book was very educational and is even relatable at times, I would recommend this to any college student who is yearning to explore new literature.

In the first chapter the author narrates his childhood and how he was brought up by his hardworking parents who wanted to instill discipline and honesty, “ No, mommy loves you, like I love you, she just wants you to do the right thing” (11) but the death of his father left a deep impression on him. As boys the two kids grew up ten blocks away from each other in a low-income locality with Wes’s mother, Mary, having to work 2 jobs just to support her and son and Joy forcing to move back in with her parents not only because of the income but because of her depressive state from the death of her husband. Both of them passed through difficult days, but ultimately fate took them in opposite directions – Wes Moore joining the Academy because joy was able to get a large donation and the other Wes Moore learning how to lie about being a DJ and actually selling drugs.

Half way through the book we start finding out about the author’s religious grandparents and what the mother of Wes Moore, Joy, really has to do to change her child from becoming another goner in the streets of Brooklyn, New York where she grew up. The rest of the chapters is where we can really see just how different the boys’ lives are heading like one describing his situations in the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Army while the other is looking into the eyes of his heroin overdosing girlfriend along with the children he has to support. The book ends describing the events leading up to Wes Moore’s capture and where he sits today along with his brother’s death; the same for the author and what became of his military life and after career along with his mother, sister and grandparents.

The story line of the novel at first seemed somewhat toned down with the letters of both Wes’s sitting in the visiting area of the prison discussing their fathers and what would have become of them but surely progressed into a really great plot involving two entirely different children with the same name and same hometown. I’m not much of a reader but I truly enjoyed the way Wes Moore told a factual story of two men and how the reader could really follow the growth from child to man and youngster into gangster.

The author and other Wes Moore are extraordinarily similar as in growing up with single mothers and one major sibling in their lives, until their teen years where both characters started experimenting in their own ways, the author trying to run away from the academy and the other Wes Moore feeling THC course through his body for the first time. They both did not do well in school and always insisted on hanging out with their friends like Justin and Woody who were not the best influences themselves and their paths began to separate when Wes made the good decision to stay at Valley Forge, while inmate Wes made the destructive decision to get further into the drug game. These two vital decisions, which probably didn’t seem too important to them at the time, worked like dominoes. One good decision led to more open paths, as well as how bad decisions led more destructive ones.

For me, most of the facts represented in the novel where not only interesting in a time line style but how it presented a lot of educational “crumbs” for readers who maybe dealing with the loss of a parent or dealing with drug problems. I feel as though the book was written not only to show if you are a product of your environment like Wes was trying to say in his speech at M.S.U but meant to show how you should always think before doing what you do or the result can favor against you- “Do you have a high school degree?’’, “No” replied Wes, “Do you have a record?”, “yes” (140).

Also not only was the book educational but it depicts how big of an importance each parent has in every child’s life whether they are there or not because face it, if the mother Joy Moore could not find a way to get Wes into the academy, he may as well been off like the imprisoned Wes. On the other side it makes you wonder “what if? What if Wes, the author, just ran away? What if he never struck his mother or his sister never antagonized the argument that potentially ignited the fuse to Wes going to the academy? And vice-versa for the other Wes Moore. What if he actually acknowledged his Muslim love at an earlier age causing him to plummet into a world of religion and positive following? Or what if he just swallowed the guilt that his father left behind for him, opened up in school and just did the school work instead of following the path of thousands of other incarcerated young males.

Another aspect I thought that would be potentially difficult to write about would be the way both characters are transcribed throughout the story. I would have guessed that describing both of the stories would be confusing but how he relates both of them in the same segments, using 3 major parts was very interesting. It was easy to tell the difference between which Wes Moore he was writing about because he would either write in first or third person. For author Wes Moore, himself, he would write in 1st person. For the other Wes Moore, he would write in 3rd person. When you think about it, this system really makes sense. The fact that the book was so well organized made it easier to read and enjoy- which meant it was also easier to understand the points made every chapter and what was currently going on with them.

The Other Wes Moore is a great novel due to the level of organization and writing style used. The book introduces metropolitan kids to themes that they may never come across, for example, what it was like growing up in a somewhat monumental age for the United States and the scar remaining from segregation or the drug abuse present in the parts they were growing up in, Mayor Schmoke was lambasted for saying “I started to think, maybe we ought to consider this drug problem a public health problem rather than a criminal justice problem” (86). This is a book I would recommend to any student attending college. It is a smartly written novel which does a great job at getting its point across, Are you a product of your environment?