Notes on Reading The Other Wes Moore

● ● ● ● ● ● Part 1: Fathers and Angels ○ “Your father wasn’t there because he couldn’t be, my father wasn’t there because he chose not to be. We’re going to mourn their absence in different ways” (3) Is Daddy Coming with Us? (1982) ○ Wes’s father came home from work not feeling well; disoriented, lack of neck control ○ He went to the hospital and they anesthetized his throat, but they did not realize that his throat was closing ○ Doctors questioned his symptoms, sent him home, and told him to get some rest ○ Later that night, he fell down the stairs and passed away at the hospital ○ Seeing that he was unshaven/disheveled, and that his address was not from an affluent area, the doctors sent him home to die ■ He would have survived if they had treated him instead of misdiagnosing him and telling him to rest Other Wes’s mother’s grant for college was terminated and she could no longer afford going to school ○ Mary now needed to drop out of school and work full time ○ “His father had been a ghost since his birth” (18) ○ Wes’s grandmother Alma needed a new kidney but did not trust the doctors to successfully complete the transplant ■ Alma’s body rejected the kidney and she passed away ○ Wes’s father Bernard disappeared before he was born and attempted to make an appearance once in his life, but then left and didn’t return until years later In Search of Home (1984) ○ Wes’s older brother Tony wanted him to grow up better than he did ○ Where they lived, Cherry Hill, was “a breeding ground for poverty, drugs, and despair” and it was “islated and desolate … small, poorly constructed” (29) ○ Wes focused more on football than on school ○ He noticed that there were not really any present fathers around, other than his friend Woody’s ○ Wes gets in a fight while playing football in the street and his rage drove him to bring a knife to the fight ■ The police showed up and he was arrested before he hurt anyone ■ His friend Woody was arrested too for attempting to defend him ○ Tony’s father picked Wes up and his mother didn’t find out until years later Wes (narrator) lived in a dangerous neighborhood and his mother was distraught over the loss of his father ○ They moved to the Bronx to live with his grandparents ■ Drugs and violence started to creep in over recent years and caused fear and apathy in the community ■ His family attempted to shelter him from that life ■ He played basketball until his curfew Foreign Ground (1987) ○ ● Wes (narrator) made friends with Justin, one of the few other black kids at his school ○ His mother was too afraid to send him to public school because she did not think he would graduate, let alone be prepared for life/college after school ○ The private school he went to was in an affluent, predominantly white area, but he felt lost there, and he was embarrassed to go there ○ He got suspended for fighting with another student and injuring him ○ He didn’t fit in, but knew his mother made many sacrifices for him to go there ○ Wes attempted having his school friends and neighborhood friends together to play baseball, but it didn’t work out ■ He felt like he was too “rich” for the kids from his neighborhood, but too “poor” for the kids at school (53) ○ His two worlds were mutually exclusive and he was stuck in the middle ○ His grades began to slip and he didn’t care anymore ■ His mom threatened military school, but he knew she would never send him Other Wes’s brother Tony was involved in drugs and hadn’t been to school since 8th grade; he got shot in the chest during a drug deal ○ Wes gets involved with drug dealers, although he is not actually selling drugs, against Tony’s warnings ○ Before this, he had found his mother’s stash of weed and smoked it with his friends, but didn’t have much experience with drugs ○ He agreed to wear a headset and alert the drug dealers when cops were passing by, against his brother’s warnings