The Other Wes Moore

Dear Students,

This semester we will be reading a book recommended to me by one of my students last semester. It’s called The Other Wes Moore: One Name: Two Fates. When I read it, I knew right away this was a book I would use year after year with my students. I hope you will agree when you read it that it merits this importance. The books is about two young African-American boys who grew up in the same era of the late 1980’s to 1990’s.

Both young men faced many of the same challenges in their families and in school but the author grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar and worked in the Obama White House, while “the other” Wes Moore went to prison for life for the killing of a police officer. But were their lives really that similar? We will look at this book not only from a social and economic environment viewpoint; we will examine the decisions made by the parents- particularly the mothers- both before and after they had children. What impact did social and economic capital -or the lack of it-have on the lives of boys who- on the surface at least- seemed to have very similar lives?

other wesmoore_both