 January/February 2003
Finding Fish
by Antwone Fisher
Every so often a new voice emerges to give credence to circumstances so compelling that it warrants a closer look at what brings situations so vividly to life in the maps of minds that a reader will want to stop what they're doing and look it up...as if longitude and latitude could explain the magic of real life drama. But when told with such force and determination, you readily realize that it is still part of the fabric that weaves social intercourse a strident discourse in what needs to be done for amends. Antwone Fisher's story is just that kind of situation.
Finding Fish, the book, is a rocky-style saga about personal triumph and overcoming improbable odds. It deals with trauma, and what can happen when governing bodies have jurisdiction over, and legislate a child's safe passage to unaccredited receivership. Foster home care for all the good that it embodies comes with inherent problems that cause havoc for receipents who're forced to carry the baggage and suffer the consequences. Overcoming a troubled past, righting wrongs, and being able to discuss it without inhibitions are truly challenges that compelled the author to shed light on his story.
From the beginning this novel will have you spellbound, if not appalled at how adversity can subvert the best laid plans to go awry. Save for a few lapses into lumbering sentimentality, this is an uncommonly tough and poignant underdog story told undoubted by Mr. Fisher with intrepidation. How can a story like this be told without first conquering the past before being able to confront the future? A set of unfortunate circumstances set the stage here: His father was killed by a gunshot blast shortly before he was born in 1959; His young adlescent mother couldn't handle the pressure at 17 in raising a son, so she gave him up to adoption; and once in the system, he had to deal with a foster parents' relentless binges of cruelty, both mental and physical.
The gist of the story gives it insulation against what I feel would be disgust and anger when read for its full impact...and this is where the author writes from the heart, capturing the loneliness and sorrow of a dismal childhood and his determination and resolve to rise above it. A book written like this should have no problem in keeping readers fully engaged and hopeful for a good ending. In his later teen years he find solace in the Navy where he becomes a man, taking advantage of the discipline and tenets that would become his saving grace.
Descriptive books like this rarely find one not being able to empathize and be sympathetic to the other vices common to this story. I speak of religious hypocrisy, sex abuse at the hands of various female caretakers, and emotional instability. The fact that Antwone first experienced the N word so early in life didn't make him immune to the injustices of self-esteem as he grew older and endeavored to bring levity and light to his dark world.
As I read this book, I did much more than root for the underdog -- I purposed in my mind that somehow there must be a way for all foster care children to seek ways to not let it steal hope, and that I'd take a second look at why and to whom I mentor. I wanted a happy ending as I approached epilog, for this I know, was a story that needed to be told. You will want to read this book and be reminded that for every homeless child, for every misplaced child treated as wards of the state as it pertain to foster care, or anything close to that which is an anathema of our society for the betterment of safe havens for them, sanctity should be given alll of your attention for the good of well-intended hope. Buy this book, read it, and be responsive to those that may share the same plight as one, Antwone Fisher did.
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