Oregon Humanities

Everybody Reads 2011 Event with Author of The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

In December 2000, the same Baltimore newspaper that lauded Wes Moore’s Rhodes Scholarship also reported on another Wes Moore—this one on the lam after a botched armed robbery that ended with a slain police officer. While one young Baltimorean studied at Oxford, became an elite U.S. Army paratrooper and served as Special Assistant to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, the other served a life sentence in prison. The coincidence of the shared name led the high-achieving Moore, who was named one of Ebony magazine’s “Top 30 Leaders Under 30” for 2007 and _Crain’s New York Business_’ “40 Under 40 Rising Stars” in 2009, to think about what might have been—for both men.

Moore, the writer, struck up a correspondence with his jailed counterpart, leading to the book The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, which is the Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads 2011 selection. He discovered that both Wes Moores were fatherless, and both had early run-ins with the law and trouble in the classroom. “The chilling truth,” Moore writes, “is that my story could have been his. The tragedy is that his story could have been mine.” The author will tell both men’s stories in a special event presented by Literary Arts and Multnomah County Library on Monday, March 7, 2011, at 7:30 p.m. at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (1037 SW Broadway, Portland). Oregon Humanities is a cosponsor of the event. Visit the Literary Arts website for more information and to purchase tickets.

02 December 2010 | Permalink | Comments? (0 so far)