Finding Fish by Antwone Quenton Fisher
By Lise Funderburg
TIME
2/26/01
You can almost hear the pitch for Fisher's screenplay, currently in production
and now fleshed out in his memoir: Dickens in Cleveland! The Color Purple, but
true and male and set in the 1960s! The facts of his life have a movie-of-the-week
ring: relentlessly abusive foster care; redemption through military service;
and irrepressible intellect. But detailed accounting distinguishes the tale,
and Fisher's searing, luminous portrait of his childhood transcends the familiar,
as does his retroactive (and likely hard-won) tenderness toward the boy no one
else loved.