Skip to content

Alyssa Moore

Alyssa Moore was a Black American front-office worker in Baltimore, Maryland, the wife of Derek Moore, and the mother of five daughters and Andre Moore. She ran much of the daily operation of the eight-person Moore household while becoming Andre’s first and most persistent advocate.

Family Life

Alyssa managed a working-class home with six children on a careful budget. Her oldest daughter, Imani, helped fill household gaps when Alyssa was stretched thin.

Andre’s severe obsessive-compulsive disorder went unnamed through much of his childhood. Alyssa learned to read his condition without clinical language: the speed of his speech, the difference between distress she could help him move through and a spiral she could not, the textures and contacts he could not tolerate, and the routines that allowed a crowded morning to proceed. That fluency made her indispensable to her son and left her perpetually half-listening for him while five other children also needed her.

Advocacy for Andre

Main article: Alyssa Moore and Andre Moore

Her office experience gave Alyssa a practical understanding of forms, schedules, and institutional machinery, skills she brought into meetings with schools, probation personnel, and intake staff. Alyssa repeatedly told those institutions that Andre was sick rather than bad. She was correct before the systems around him possessed or accepted an accurate diagnosis, but her accuracy did not prevent symptoms from becoming disciplinary entries, supervision violations, and eventually a criminal record.

She remained active after his incarceration. The family visited when access allowed, called, and kept money in his commissary account. Alyssa continued to recognize the speech-rate changes that signaled rising anxiety and remained the person most fluent in the difference between Andre’s ordinary precision and impending loss of control.

Characters Supporting Characters Living Characters Black Characters Black American Characters Moore Family (Baltimore)