Antwone Fisher

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“I think back upon a childhood full of longing for belonging and see my life now as what I have created out
of my dreams. An image comes to mind of Mrs. Brown at the orphanage in Cleveland, me sitting at her
side, telling her, ‘you’ll read about me someday.

“I was definitely dreaming then. With no evidence of that ever being possible, I clung to that preposterous
vision and with the force of those dreams willed it and made it happen.

“Not because I needed to be famous, but because I needed Miss Pickett to be wrong. I needed the world
that made me feel uninvited to be wrong. So I imagined myself free. I imagined myself loved. I imagined
myself as somebody.” – “Finding Fish,” a memoir by Antwone Quenton Fisher.

Antwone Quenton Fisher, born in prison to 17 year old Eva Mae Fisher and 23 year old Eddie Elkins, who
was shot and killed before Antwone was even born, has become somebody, somebody quite remarkable.

He is a man who survived the cruelties of foster care and the brutality of homelessness to become a
successful Hollywood screenwriter and a devoted husband and father. “Finding Fish: A Memoir” (William
Morrow) is the inspiring story of his incredible life’s journey.

Born in 1959 in the most inauspicious of circumstances, Antwone Quenton Fisher was placed in foster care
within the first few weeks of his life.

After two years in a loving foster home, the state foolishly took Antwone away, claiming that the
attachment between Antwone and his foster mother could be problematic.

He was soon placed in the home of Reverend and Mrs. Pickett, a middle-aged couple with grown children
of their own. It was in the Pickett’s loveless household that the nightmare of his childhood began.

Describing the everyday misery of his life with astounding eloquence and grace, Fisher offers a window
into his very soul, it’s depths of pain and fear, and it’s strength and resolve.

Fisher was physically and emotionally abused through his 14 years with the Picketts. On one occasion,
when he innocently pokes at the flames beneath a simmering pot on the stove with a broom straw, Miss
Pickett reacts by beating him with a flaming newspaper.

He was routinely tied to a support beam in a pitch-black, damp basement for hours on end. He was
unceasingly maligned and ridiculed by several members of the Pickett family and totally ignored by others,
including Mr. Pickett, who after ten years of having Antwone in his home didn’t even know his name.
From about the age of 3, he was sexually abused by a neighbor and family friend.

The unspeakable shame he felt during the years of his victimization keep him from ever telling a soul about
this woman’s terrible betrayal. Miss Pickett never gave Fisher so much as a nickel to buy a candy bar,
despite the fact that the state provided a weekly allowance for his personal use.

Miss Pickett even pocketed the money Fisher earned shoveling snow and raking leaves for neighbors. After
one of Fisher and Miss Pickett’s fights, she follows through on her threat to “send him back.” Fisher packs
his meager belongings into a grocery bag, and braves the long bus ride to the Child Welfare social services
office alone.

Fisher survived 14 long years with the Picketts, and when he walked out the door, he didn’t get so much as
a good-bye.

His next stop was the George Junior Republic school for boys, a place for troubled youngsters that afforded
him the opportunity to become a parent, to himself. Incredibly self-disciplined, Fisher vowed he’d never
smoke cigarettes, take drugs, or do anything to get arrested.

At George Republic, he met social worker Bill Ward, “a man God himself must have chosen” to deliver a
special message to Fisher, “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. It doesn’t do any good.”

George Junior Republic was a form of refuge for Fisher, a place where he could rest and recuperate
unmolested. It was his last home before homelessness.

The day after Fisher graduated high school, Bill Ward drove him to a YMCA men’s shelter in Cleveland
where he would begin life as an emancipated minor. He was two months away from his 18th birthday, but
his first few days at the shelter revealed that he would be forced into the adult world much sooner.

In desperate need of protection from the derelicts and sexual predators that roamed the halls of the YMCA,
Fisher fell in with a criminal named Butch who gave him a job as a runner picking up cash from hookers.

His experiences with Butch were devastating and he soon fled the criminal underworld despite the fact that
he had absolutely nowhere to go.

After sleeping on park benches and in alleys, he made the critical decision to join the United States Navy.
Graduating as an official recruit of the U.S. Navy, Fisher experienced a purity of feeling he’d never felt
before: pride.

“My life was beginning,” he writes. “Not another chapter in my sad history, but another book, another life
entirely, with every possibility of every good fortune ahead of me.” In the course of his 11 years, with the
Navy, every ship and every station provided him with essential lessons.

He learned how to walk with his head high, literally. He learned to trust others and came to understand that
others could rely on him. He also befriended a navy psychiatrist, Commander Williams, who listened to
Fisher’s story and helped him see that his life had not begun as a foster child.

Fisher began to accept that he came from somewhere and he decided that someday he would unravel the
mystery of where that was.

In 1992, just after starting a new job as a security guard at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Fisher decided to
find his family. He conducted some research and eventually contacted an Annette Elkins in Cleveland who
turned out to be his aunt.

She immediately told her long lost nephew that if any of the Elkins’ had known about his existence, they’d
have “found him and brought him home to be raised by his true family.” Within months, Fisher met all of
his kin, including his mother Eva Mae:

“The door opened into a long, narrow kitchen area. My heart was beating rapidly. I had prepared a script in
my mind for what I needed to say to my mother that had been painfully written over a lifetime. I would ask
her: Why didn’t you ever come to get me? I would ask her, Didn’t you wonder about me? What I was
doing? What I had become, or even if I was still alive?

“She would have to hear me say, I dreamed about you every day, my mother, what you looked like, your
voice, even your scent.

“For thirty-three years, I’ve dreamed of you. Didn’t you miss me at all? I would let her know that I’d taken
care of myself all my life, that I’d never been in trouble with the law, that I’d never fathered children, and
never done drugs or smoked a cigarette in my life.

“I’ve educated myself, I’d say, I’ve read hundreds of books. I’ve traveled throughout the world. I speak two
languages. I’ve served in the U.S. Navy and been awarded medals and ribbons of honor. I’ve been trusted
with people’s lives. I paint and write poetry. I have friends who would help me if I needed help. I made my
way through terrible times and I never complained. I’ve become a good man and a good person.”

But Fisher quickly discovered that his mother’s road had been even longer and harder than his own had.
Eva Mae gave birth to four other children after him, all whom grew up as wards of the state. Over the
years, she had been hospitalized, incarcerated and on probation. She had been beaten down by life.

She looked much older than her years and seemed very fragile. “In the place inside me where the hurt of
abandonment had been, now only compassion lived,” wrote Fisher of their reunion.

“Finding Fish” is the story of a boy who made it in the world with the help of a few good souls, and by
believing in himself.

“My mind travels back momentarily to some of the visions I made up for myself – that I would become a
family man, a good provider, a strong, loving husband and father, in a secure, love-filled home,” he writes.
“And here I am, living that vision, with good neighbors and good friends.”

Fisher never saw Miss Pickett again, but he can’t say that the past doesn’t hurt him still. He thinks about
how he’ll explain his life to his daughter, and hopes that she understands that he was made of the “same
strong stuff of which she is made.”

His greatest hope is that she sees his fortune as the result of the true goodness of people who exist in the
world.

In a twist right out of a fairytale, the story of Fisher’s life made the rounds of the Sony lot and Hollywood
executives lined up to buy it. Fisher wisely decided not to sell himself short, however, and turned down
their offers.

Instead, he wrote the screenplay himself and after 41 drafts, he sold it to 20th Century Fox. A tumultuous
and triumphant tale of self-discovery, “Finding Fish” is an unforgettable tale.

Antwone Quenton Fisher is a producer and screenwriter working in Hollywood. His projects include the
upcoming Double “O” Soul, starring Mariah Carey and Trigger Happy.

His latest project is Jelly Beans, with producer Will Smith. He lives with his wife and daughter in Los
Angeles, California.

“Finding Fish” is soon to be a major motion picture directed by and starring Denzel Washington.

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