For many, the month of January is filled with New Years Resolutions -- extra time spent at the gym, better eating habits, and more time spent with family -- but for me, it has always been a month of books. As a little girl, there was nothing better than unwrapping my presents Christmas morning and receiving enough books to tide me through the winter break. With a fresh stack of crisp books sitting on my bedside table, and three weeks of no homework, I was invincible. I road a raft with Huck and Jim, explored planets with St. Exupery, and fell in love alongside Jane. Years later, not much has changed. In fact, at the risk of exposing my inner-nerd, each New Years Day, starting at midnight, I read my very first book of the year from start to finish as everyone else settlers into their beds.
This year, I read books of all sorts--my first Grisham mystery (don't tell any of my bookish friends), some Nouwen to work through the challenging spiritual crises death brought my family this year, and of course, no year would be complete without my Virginia Woolf. However, my latest book, The Other Wes Moore, deserves its own attention. After finishing this book, I cried a little and wrote a letter to the author (a rarity despite my bibliophilia). Wes Moore, the author, is a Rhodes Scholar, combat veteran, White House Fellow, and a business leader in New York. He also was raised in Baltimore surrounded often by the tragedy that poverty, substance use, and violence bring to communities. Not too far away, a man the same age, with the same name also grew up. However, this Wes Moore is serving a life sentence in prison for the armed robbery and murder of an officer in February of 2000.
In light of the recent tragedies and tensions surrounding race politics, poverty, criminalization, and the safety of our police force, this book really struck a chord with me. Moore's main question throughout the novel is why did he end up in a place of privilege while "the other Wes Moore" is behind bars? Without placing the blame completely on education, poverty, substance use, mentors, genetics, or environment, Moore does a brilliant job of describing the complexity in which our urban youth live. While he shares "stories" from both his own life and "the other Wes", he is sure to explain, "I don't want readers to ever forget the high stakes of these stories--and of all of our stories: that life and death, freedom and bondage, hang in the balance of every action we take" (xiv).
He describes his childhood as one of turbulence. His father died in his presence, his mother working endlessly to make sure he was sheltered as much as he could be. Moore describes entering his neighborhood as "being assaulted" (48). Low expectations over-shadowed much of his community and Moore describes the joy with which he overcame such expectations. In the end, he notes that his mentors, his mom's firm belief in education and moving out of poverty, and fate are all to blame for his success. In fact, the subtitle, One Name, Two Fates speaks to the strong weight he places on fate's role in his life and the life of the other Wes. The word "fate" in itself implies some kind of serendipity, lack of control, or perhaps predetermined. This was truly the sense I got from reading his comparison of his own life and the lives of the thousands of other children that will never rise out of the poverty that assaults them.
While fate is uncontrollable, I was touched by the true power of kindness, resilience, and friendship played in the outcomes of both Wes Moore's lives and their futures. I was inspired by the chance that in my own future, I could imagine a world in which we have better methods, practices, education systems, and programming that speaks to the children the way the author of this book was spoken to. In my own lifetime, we can find ways to improve the resilience of youth, the empowerment of women, and decrease the violence and criminalization found in larger numbers in communities of color and poverty. There could be no greater New Years resolution!
