Finding Fish

“Through the splintered wood, I can hear wondrous voices inside and the sound of African drums beating in celebration.”

The rhythm of African music connects Antwone with a heritage that stretches back beyond colonial oppression. Yet he is still removed from this state of harmony and community. The party is happening in another room; in fact, the Elkins’ household is right down the road from his lonely life at the Picketts’.

“Ironically, I knew nothing about the racism that was at the heart of this war.”

Racism is an ever-present undercurrent that belies the suffering of many of the people in Antwone’s life. While the Picketts perpetuate the oppression that they have been subjected to, the Fisher family struggle with addiction, and Horace Jr. is sufficiently moved to support the Black Panthers.

“Until that day, I only understood my own sadness. But all at once, I became aware that there was more sadness out there than I could even begin to imagine, enough to fill every ocean full of tears. With too many tears of my own to hide, I ran outside, out to the backyard, behind the garage. Then I leaned my head in my hands and cried for a long time.”

When Martin Luther King dies, Antwone’s tears are charged with the emotion of the suffering of a race of people and, beyond that, of mankind. This awareness deepens his empathy, just as he envisages their tears collecting together like an ocean that connects continents. The civil rights movement, too, swells like an ocean tide. Antwone will later explore literal oceans and even contextualize his oppressors’ mistreatment of him so that he is able to empathize sufficiently enough to he renounce victimhood.

“In all my life till now, rain has meant staying inside and not being able to go out to play. But now for the first time I realize that rain doesn’t have to be bad. And what’s more, I understand, sadness doesn’t have to be bad, either. Come to think of it, I figure you need sadness, just as you need the rain.”

Antwone’s ability to make reparation for hurt and loss is one of the factors that sets him on a different path from his foster siblings. He can forgive and heal from the suffering he experiences by accepting his sad feelings as though they were weather. The relief he feels because of his acceptance of his sadness is clear when he laughs after crying for Martin Luther King’s death.

“There were going to be days, I knew, when it would pour without warning, days when I’d find myself without an umbrella. But my understanding would act as my all-purpose slicker and rubber boots.”

Antwone’s capacity to bear his painful emotions is one of the chief strengths of his character. A key component of self-care and of resilience, this ability enables him to grow in self-confidence. This is just one way in which Antwone’s autobiography breaks open taboo subjects. He encounters many during the course of his life: homelessness, human trafficking, childhood sexual abuse, racism. He manages and moves through each of these phases, diffusing the shame that causes them to be shrouded in silence.

“[…] no matter how often someone says you can’t do something, by simply working harder and trying, you can prove them wrong and actually change your circumstance. This lesson is a piece of gold I’ll keep tucked in my back pocket the rest of my life.”

Antwone’s personal sense of agency is built incrementally over the course of years. Realizations like this transform him as a person and redirect the course of his life. In a country that is linked with gold rushes and dreaming, Antwone’s metaphor here establishes his story as a typically American tale of survival against the odds through pioneering spirit, persistence, and hard work.

“No wonder Dwight got so mean; they made him so. And the tragedy of that was how naturally brilliant he was.”

While all the lives of the foster children at the Picketts’ are blighted by a dearth of love, Dwight’s life is a foil for Antwone’s. His fall from grace into the country’s prison system after starting life as a child rich in promise is figured as a tragedy. If Antwone’s life is also described as a play, their roles might easily have been reversed in Antwone’s view. Antwone feels the catharsis that emerges from Dwight’s tragic life experience.

“[…] posters of some of the more famous images of the movement—Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and pictures of the black power fist raised high by unnamed black men and women. Seeing that the community was behind these activists helped me gain greater acceptance of my own dark skin, helping to undo some of the damage Lizzie Pickett had wreaked by calling me derogatory names that referred to my color.”

While the autobiography is a personal account of a particular life, the wider context of that life is palpably present as the stage on which the play is performed. A temporal and structural analogue is discernable between Antwone’s liberation from his childhood abusers and the Civil Rights Movement. The movement comes to prominence in the fifties and sixties, the years during which Antwone is oppressed by the Picketts. Later, he realizes that he has the power to liberate himself from that climate of oppression, echoing the Civil Rights Movement.

“[…] anyone who demeans another person in word or deed demeans himself or herself.”

Although Antwone is persecuted for years by those who are ostensibly his caregivers, he is able to transcend this dynamic. As Antwone grows up, Mrs. Pickett’s hypocrisy comes to light with increasing regularity—from the conciliatory behavior of Mercy and Brother toward Antwone to the moment in which he catches Mrs. Pickett dancing to the “devil’s music,” sees her drunk, and finally calls her out at social services. This citation also bears relation to racism, colonial history, and the United States prison system, all of which Antwone encounters on his journey.

 “You come to understand that you can be living in a house and still be homeless, as I was in the Picketts’ home and in the institutions where I later went to live.”

This comment of Antwone’s recalls the quotation from James Baldwin (whom he reads voraciously while in the navy): “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” Writing in Giovanni's Room, Baldwin articulates one of the principles that aids Antwone in recreating his life.

“[…] hiding from layers of hurt and anger about everything that had happened, as I spun my own cocoon from the threads of things I imagined for myself that would prove Mrs. Pickett wrong. Without knowing I had begun my own transformation, that one desire became my reason to live.”

Antwone figures himself as a butterfly or moth, trapped before his liberation, and cocooned by his status as a ward of the state. He spins both an emotional cocoon and a story around himself. The autobiography is thus figured as a carapace that he will emerge from anew. Storytelling by association is figured and cathartic and transformative, and literature a site for regeneration and recreation. There is also a poignant note to the metaphor, in that Antwone will shortly become homeless and spends his life searching for (and finally creating) a home for himself.

“‘Antwone,’ I hear Columbo say, and turn to him as he offers, in the kindest tone he can muster, ‘stop feeling sorry for yourself.’ […] that God himself must have chosen Bill Ward as his special messenger to tell me what no one had ever told me before and, by giving me that vital piece of information, to help transport me safely into the unknown.”

Antwone’s transformation from victimhood to empowerment is aided in this moment by the ironically named Bill Ward. On the precipice of official adulthood, Antwone is forced to take responsibility for the trajectory of his life. Bill Ward’s comment helps guide him from institutionalization toward autonomy. Antwone imagines several of his influential coaches over the next few years as famous personalities like Columbo, George Kennedy, and Elmer Fudd. His tendency to perceive people as characters identifies him as a natural storyteller, with a sense of humor. His ability to see the superhero in the man echoes the invention of Superman by two relatively disenfranchised students at his school, Glenville High. All of these men are stand-ins for his missing father.

“That was what the navy did for me from the start. It made me belong, it made me feel that I was the same as everyone else.”

An orphaned child without a clear heritage or connections within society, Antwone gets exactly what he needs from the navy. The yearning for a sense of belonging is driving force in his life, and one that is relatable. The explorative nature of naval service, and social connection and promotion on the basis of merit, also run counter to social divisions such as racism, economic status, and nationality.

“He seemed to understand nothing about my years of nervous shyness and the old stutter I tried to cover up with a low voice. Again, he acted like it was a personal affront to his senses.”

Though hard on Antwone, Chief Lott forces him to comport himself with confidence, stand up straight, and speak clearly after years of abuse. The renunciation of his stutter is a key way-marker on Antwone’s journey toward becoming a successful writer and a self-confident person, as he goes from “lazy mouth” (135) to “Sweet Mouth” (313).

“This was more than a lesson about saving receipts. It was much more. It was the discovery of the power of words.”

Antwone realizes that he has the ability to successfully protest against his circumstances gradually. Deciding not to go to church or to eat what the Picketts do are early examples of his later autonomy. Words enable him to adapt the circumstances of his life quite literally, in an autobiography as well as in a Hollywood screenwriting career.

“I became educated about black history that began not in slavery—as it was taught to us in school—but in our proud African heritage.”

Antwone rejects the account of African history that begins with slavery. In the same way that he has origins beyond his orphaned state, so too do African Americans descend from a lineage that precedes enslavement. Retelling history in this way serves to orphan African Americans from their true identity.

“[…] one of the many horrendous violations that slavery wrought was robbing black people of their natural language—their toolbox—and replacing it with that of the slave master […] A person’s natural language, I concluded, is the electricity of his or her soul, and to disconnect it is to shut them down.”

As the American Civil Rights Movement made clear, voicelessness goes hand in hand with disempowerment and oppression. The disenfranchised are robbed of their identity and constrained by that of another. While free speech is one of the foundations of democracy, slavery and other forms of oppression counteract the equality upheld in the Declaration of Independence.

“I’m beached now, never to see the world by sea again. But I know the seas will not forget me, nor the eleven years we spent together.”

Antwone finds solace and a sense of connection with the sea. During this time, the navy gives him a feeling of belonging and security. The intimate relationship he imagines having with the sea is at odds with the tradition of sea stories, which normally involve yearning and absence. This suggests that Antwone comes to terms with his loneliness while at sea, making reparation for his sense of loss. Earlier he imagines that the sea is composed of the tears of the suffering, so it offers him a community. Connecting all lands, it is also unexclusive.

“Later on, we stayed in touch for a while, but as two people with only DNA in common, being so different, and given the circumstances of our status, creating a true familial relationship was not possible. I liked her, and I’m sure she liked me, too. But we were still strangers and soon my spark of curiosity extinguished. And that was that.”

After Antwone longs his whole life for his mother, Eva Gardner is a stranger to him when he finally meets her. Antwone has learned that closeness is not necessarily determined by DNA, just as it is possible for him to feel homeless while living in a home. Though it is of such central importance in Antwone’s life, family does not always entail deep connection.

“Only on the plane, four hours in the air, did I really realize that I was never an audience member just watching, but a player, in fact the star, the central figure of the story…this story of my life.”

From this aerial perspective, Antwone is able to see that the tumultuous events of his life do not define him. The objectivity with which he views his life story liberates him from any of the conditions in which he finds himself.

“Every meal is a celebration and an opportunity for giving thanks.”

In the Post-Memoir, Antwone describes his life as “magic” (355). The banalities of domestic life are infused with a sense of the miraculous for the orphan. Though Antwone is not religious, there are echoes of the Last Supper in this final image of familial feasting. Antwone Fisher has fed the five thousand (readers) in his autobiography of self-discovery. Now his life is a celebration, in which he is grateful as soon as he awakens in the morning and every meal is a moment of thanksgiving for such providence.

“I found my family and I found myself.”

Reconnecting with and starting his own family allow Antwone to feel the sense of belonging that he has lacked his entire life. The retelling of the family story frames his own history, helping him make sense of the many shocking and traumatic events that come to pass. Antwone’s lineage is not only genetic but linguistic. His grandfather, father, and aunt are all highly literate, and his return to the family strengthens his identity as a writer. This is one of many moments in which the autobiography engages self-reflexively in identity fashioning.

“And here’s where the dream of my life turned rapidly and dramatically into a wild, wonderful, different kind of adventure.”

Themes of slavery and liberation recur in this deeply American tale, whether it be in the civil rights movement, the oppressiveness of Antwone’s life with the Picketts, or the prison system.