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Introduction, Interlude, & Chapter One
Summary: Introduction
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates contains the tales of two men with the same name: Wes Moore. The author—Moore—narrates both his and the other man’s—Wes—stories. Both Wes Moores grew up fatherless in Baltimore, disadvantaged by poverty and influenced by the pressures of the streets. Moore conveys how he overcame his adversity, achieving successes in his life he never believed possible as a youth, while the other Wes Moore will spend the rest of his life behind bars for his part in the murder of an off-duty police officer named Sergeant Prothero.
Moore became aware of his counterpart when a Baltimore newspaper published an article highlighting his achievements including a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study in Oxford University in England. The same paper also included articles detailing the crimes of another young man named Wes Moore. After returning from Oxford, Moore finds himself fixated on the other Wes Moore’s story. Moore finally writes Wes a letter inquiring about his story and receives a welcoming response. After several visits with the other Wes in prison and having conducted hundreds of hours of interviews and research, Moore writes this book to demonstrate the parallels between their lives and the lives of countless other young men in their generation.
Part I: Fathers and Angels
Summary: Interlude
During Moore’s first visit with Wes, he asks Wes how his father’s absence impacted his life. Wes explains that his father was always absent and, therefore, had no impact on it; unlike Moore, whose father died when he was young, Wes’s father chose not to be in his life. Moore describes the institutional nature of the correction facility where Wes resides and what he experienced being processed through the prison’s visitation center. As Moore begins to ask another question, Wes asks Moore to share how his father’s death impacted him. Moore reflects on their divergent experience with a similar situation: Moore was encouraged to remember his father, while Wes was taught to forget, but both were taught not to question. The interlude ends with both men pondering the impact of their absent fathers.
Chapter One: Is Daddy Coming with Us? (1982)
Summary: Section 1 (Moore)
Moore describes how at three years old, he hit his sister Nikki while they were playing. In his recollection, he runs to his room, afraid of his mother’s response, when he hears his father’s soothing voice attempt to placate her. Moore describes how his mother immigrated at age three to the United States from Jamaica and how she struggled to make a better life for herself. Moore recalls how his father came to his room after the incident with his sister and gave him advice that he would always remember. Moore admits he has only two memories of his father: the memory just described and the memory of his father dying in front of him.
Moore’s father, Westley, worked hard throughout his life and became successful working as a reporter. Westley later worked at a local radio station, where he met Joy, Moore’s mother. Moore explains how Westley contracted acute epiglottitis, which would have been treatable if the doctors had properly diagnosed his condition. After visiting the ER and being sent home to rest, Westley came down the stairs wheezing for breath, fell to the floor, and died in front of a young Moore.
Summary: Section 2 (Wes)
The narrative shifts to the other Wes Moore’s family. Wes prepares to go to sleep over at his paternal grandmother Mamie’s house as his mother, Mary, gets ready for a night out. Mary just learned that the Pell Grant funding her education at Johns Hopkins University will not be renewed. Without the scholarship, she won’t be able to continue her education. Since Wes’s father, Bernard, has never been around and his older brother, Tony, spends most of his time in the Murphy Homes Projects with his father, Wes thinks of himself as the man of the house.
Mary became pregnant with Tony at sixteen. Shortly after, Mary’s mother, Alma, died, and her father’s alcoholism became progressively worse. Later, Mary met Bernard, who also struggled with alcoholism, and she became pregnant with Wes. Bernard tried to visit Wes only once when Wes was eight months old. Wes, now six, sees Bernard for the first time when Mary drops him off at Mamie’s house. Bernard is drunk on the couch when Mary enters. Bernard asks who the boy is, and Mary introduces Wes to his father.
Analysis: Introduction, Interlude, & Chapter One
Moore explores the impact of fathers on their children by comparing his own fatherless childhood to Wes’s, a commonality he believes will unite himself and Wes. Moore is taken aback when Wes claims that his absent father had no influence on him. Up to this point, the book could be described as Moore’s academic study of Wes, but the tone shifts when Wes asks Moore the same question about his own absent father. Unable to give a clear answer, Moore realizes that defining the role of a father in one’s life is complex. Even among absent fathers, there are distinctions, and Moore will have to study his own roots if he wants to better understand Wes. Moore’s father died when Moore was very young, but he left Moore with memories of protection and calm wisdom. Like his father, Moore is a journalist. In contrast, Wes’s father chose alcohol and drugs over being present for his son. While it’s too simplistic to claim that their fathers made all the difference in their outcomes, Moore opens the book with this topic to show how even small distinctions can affect our lives in profound ways.
The author describes his mother’s intense response to a minor sibling altercation to demonstrate the lasting effects of intergenerational abuse. When three-year-old Moore punches his much older sister Nikki, his mother, Joy, reacts with intense anger, calming down only when Moore’s father takes her to another room. Joy’s initial response is to scream at Moore to never to put his hands on a woman, revealing that Joy’s own past trauma affects how she raises her own children. Her experiences make it difficult for her to react to a squabble between siblings objectively. Moore’s description of Joy’s “Thomas hands” further indicates that the family accepts parental violence toward children as a family trait. By recounting Joy’s story of Bill’s violence toward her, Moore conveys that Joy’s response is a sign of her desire for her children to end this legacy of violence. Ironically, Joy tries to teach her children to avoid violence the only way she knows how—through a violent outburst.
While the fathers introduced in this section are either flawed or absent (or both), strong, loving mothers greatly influence both men’s lives. Moore’s mother Joy shows strength when she takes Nikki away from her violent father, and when she performs CPR on Moore’s father while tending to Shani. Joy demonstrates her admiration and respect for strong women by naming her daughter after the poet Nikki Giovanni, who Joy loves for her “unabashed feminine strength.” Wes’s mother, Mary, shows resilience, finding ways to pursue an education while supporting her young children, even after the death of her own mother, Alma. While Alma is sick and afraid, she calls on her own mother, Mamie, who moves in and helps to take care of Alma’s children after Alma dies. Even Bernard’s mother takes care of Wes regularly, despite Bernard’s absence from his son’s life. Throughout the book, the importance of maternal love is demonstrated again and again as mothers and grandmothers provide care, love, encouragement, and discipline for Wes and Moore.
Moore explores how medical racism, or race-based bias among healthcare workers, leads to subpar treatment for people of color and has a negative impact on Black children. Both Moore families suffer catastrophic losses due to low-quality medical treatment. Moore’s father died from a treatable infection that the hospital failed to recognize, and Moore emphasizes that the hospital did not take his father seriously because he was a Black man who lived in a poor neighborhood. Wes lost his grandmother, Alma, when his mother, Mary, was sixteen. While Moore does not directly state that Alma’s death was a result of negligence, he does note that prior to entering the hospital for the kidney transplant during which she died, Alma told her own mother that she’d never received good treatment from the provider, indicating that she, too, may have experienced medical racism. Both Moore and Wes lost very close family members likely due to a medical racism, and these losses affected the trajectories of their families’ lives.
