39 pages 1 hour read

Finding Fish

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2001

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Post-MemoirChapter Summaries & Analyses

Post-Memoir Summary

Antwone now lives in California with his wife LaNette and 2-year-old daughter Indigo. Their policy is for every meal together to be a celebration.

Returning to his security guard job from his Thanksgiving trip to Cleveland, Antwone feels “like a very rich man” (356). After Antwone’s supervisor tells others his story, several production companies offer to make movies about Antwone’s life. Antwone holds out until he finds an offer that lets him write the screenplay himself. Eventually he accepts such an offer after attending a screenwriting class. Antwone writes forty-one drafts, and in just under a year, the production company sells the project to Twentieth Century Fox. Soon, Antwone is hired to write other screenplays.

Antwone meets LaNette after she walks past while he was talking with some friends from security. Antwone asks who she is and whether one of them will give LaNette his phone number. Antwone had given up on dating but has the feeling LaNette is nice. Antwone walks her to her car, and the two start dating. LaNette likes reading, so Antwone meets on a park bench with his scripts. Looking into her eyes, Antwone thinks that perhaps she might be the one. Just over a year later, the couple marry. Soon afterward, LaNette becomes pregnant. When her water breaks, Antwone immediately cleans the floor so that everything will be perfect for the baby, in contrast with his own entrance into the world. When their daughter Indigo is born, Antwone sings her “Summertime.” Fatherhood helps Antwone feel innocent again. Antwone is grateful to all the people who offered him guidance and protection.

Post-Memoir Analysis

The smell of pancakes connects Antwone’s present reality as a family man with the heavenly dream of having a family he had repeatedly as a child: “sometimes it seems that the life I am living now is only a dream” (355). In becoming a parent, he can offer the kind of belonging, love, and protection that he missed to his daughter, Indigo. “A Hard Knock Life” is a fantasy that her father has lived. Antwone’s story is completed when he finds his lost family and establishes his own.

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