- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Avon; Reprint edition (Dec 6 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0060007788
- ISBN-13: 978-0060007782
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.2 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (78 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #491,662 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Thank goodness Antwone Fisher's story has a happy ending--otherwise, his searing memoir would be nearly unbearable to read. His father was killed by a gunshot blast shortly before he was born in 1959; his 17-year-old mother gave him up for foster care. Unfortunately for Antwone, his foster mother was as successful at browbeating and demeaning her many wards as she was at lying to the Child Welfare authorities. His working-class African American neighborhood in Cleveland became purgatory for a sensitive, intelligent boy who quickly turned into a withdrawn underperformer at school. In Fisher's blow-by-blow account of his childhood, his sexual abuse at the hands of a female neighbor is hardly more horrifying than his foster mother's relentless cruelty--especially because respectable, churchgoing Mrs. Pickett justifies it all as due to the boy's wicked faults. Readers will be relieved when she dumps 15-year-old Antwone back at the Child Welfare office, even though he will endure homelessness and a scary spell of criminal employment, before an 11-year stint in the Navy provides him with a way forward. Grim though his tale is, Fisher displays throughout it the grit and stubborn integrity that kept him sane. He musters up some understanding (not forgiveness) for the dreadful Mrs. Pickett, and his eventual meeting with his burned-out mother is painfully poignant. He certainly deserves the beautiful wife and cute two-year-old daughter, cooking pancakes for him in the book's closing and redemptive scene. --Wendy Smith
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
An unflinching look at the adverse effects foster care can have on a child's life, this stunning autobiography rises above the pack of success fables from survivors of America's inner cities. Born in the 1950s to an underage single mother serving time in prison for murder, Fisher was placed in the home of a staunch minister and his wife, who appeared to be a loving couple to the series of foster care workers who monitored their home in one of Cleveland's working-class neighborhoods. Writing in a deft mix of elegant prose and forceful dialect, Fisher is especially adept at dramatizing the tactics of control and intimidation practiced by his foster mother on the abused children in her care, such as crushing Fisher's self-esteem by calling him worthless, shaming one girl after she began her period and making the boys bathe with Clorox. (Fisher supports his detailed recollections with excerpts from the actual foster-care records.) An added bonus is the author's vibrant recreation of several key black neighborhoods in Cleveland during the golden age of the Black Power movement, before the areas disappeared under the aegis of urban "renewal." If a major feature of survival memoirs is their ability to impress readers with the subject's long, steady climb to redemption and excellence, then this engrossing book is a classic. (Feb. 5) Forecast: Boosted this season by a national ad campaign, 25-city radio campaign and a six-city author tour, interest in Fisher's autobiography is guaranteed to swell when the movie adaptation of the book (shooting this month and directed by Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington, who will also star) hits screens nationwide (tentatively scheduled for next winter).
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
If I follow the path of memory back to its start, I begin life looking out my upstairs bedroom window. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
If I follow the path of memory back to its start, I begin life looking out my upstairs bedroom window. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Story with Great Ending,
By The Cooking and Reading Fiend "wild-cooking-w... (Greensboro, NC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Finding Fish: A Memoir (Paperback)
As a former juvenile court magistrate, I know that the story of Antwone Fisher should never have happened. But it did, and does, frequently, in Ohio and the 51 other states, DC and Puerto Rico. What seldom happens is the kind of ending we have here. This book tears at your heart, makes you want to becme a guardian ad litem for every child in the foster care system, and raises your awareness of your own blessings.A killer book from a fine writer with a great ending. A keeper.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reading Excellence,
By Levi (Michigan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Finding Fish: A Memoir (Paperback)
This was one of the best books that I have ever read. I found that the story was well told and it was fun to read. I liked how Fisher uses description to make the story more interesting.This was a great book and I would recommend you to go out and read this book if you like to read new stuff then this is the book for you. After you read the book see the movie they are very similar not like the other book, movie relationships. The movie is just like the book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Best Books I've Ever Read,
By A Customer
This review is from: Finding Fish: A Memoir (Paperback)
Finding Fish is a spellbinding, honestly written true story of a boy growing up facing all kinds of adversity. Most of it came from his cruel foster mother who inflicted physical and verbal abuse on him. Reading the things she did made me wonder how any adult could be so cruel toward an innocent child. I really felt for Antwone as I read this book. All he wanted was love and acceptance, but he never found it in his foster mother.Antwone has a deep strength that even as a child allowed him to withstand the torment he faced. I honestly don't think I would have endured the way he did if I had had his experiences. Despite what he went through in constantly being called Nigga or told he was evil or being tied up in the basement, he was always able to rise and know that he wasn't as bad as he was told he was. Antwone goes on to tell about his experiences as an adolescent and an adult. These experiences were also tough, but he was a survivor who was constantly learning how to push forward. Although I consider Antwone to be a hero and was inspired by his story, this is no sentimental, just pick yourself up by your bootstraps type of story. Antwoine had some brutal experiences and he tells you plainly about what he went through without sugarcoating anything or making his tormentors into caricatures. I'm sure his foster mother was as bad as he described her. I'm planning on buying this book (I checked it out from the library) and rereading it soon. This story touched me in a way that no other book has.
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