A Piece of Cake: A Memoir

Overview

Eleven-year-old Cupcake Brown woke up on the bicentennial and found her mother still in bed. She struggled to wake her up, pushing and pulling until she managed to tug her mother's lifeless corpse onto her own small body, crushing her beneath its dead weight. After squeezing out from under her mother, Cupcake calmly walked over to the phone and called her aunt Lori. "Lori, my momma's dead." Here is the threshold of a hell for young Cupcake. Rather than being allowed to live with the man she believed to be her father--who turns out to have been her stepfather--she is forced into a foster home where the kids were terrorized, the refrigerator padlocked, and Cupcake sexually abused. She eventually fled the house, only to find herself wandering from misadventure to misadventure in the "system," while also developing a massive appetite for drugs and alcohol, an appetite she paid for by turning tricks. She settled down in Los Angeles and found a home in the Crips, where she was taken in and befriended by gangsters like the legendary "Monster" Kody Scott.

Editorial Reviews

Brown reads her own horrific memoir of childhood paradise lost, sexual degradation and drug-fueled bad times with a surprising twinkle in her eye. Having made it through to the other side and a stable life, Brown revisits the ugliest places in her past, her matter-of-fact voice refusing to shy away from any of the brutal details. Brown does not milk her story for sympathy (although that is implicit in its very telling); she merely chronicles its twists and turns, its tragic losses and terrible indignities, choosing to honor her past by exposing it in its entirety. Brown's voice is measured and wry, exposing the foibles of her own stunted good sense at the same time as she documents the heinous callousness of the adults who by turns mistreat and neglect her after the untimely death of her mother. Her reading lacks something in emotion and professionalism, but its no-nonsense quality is the mark of an unhurried, self-taught storyteller. Simultaneous release with the Crown hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 21, 2005). (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of Cupcake Brown

Cupcake Brown was not born into a life of privilege, intellectual stimulation, or professional dynamics. Her younger years were not a model for achieving success; her youth interrupted by violence and emotional turbulence. At 11, she regularly engaged in prostitution, drugs, and alcohol. By age 13, she had graduated to gang activities and street crime. Unfortunately, life would get much worse before it got better as Cupcake spiraled into a life that hovered somewhere above state prison, at best, and death on the mean streets, at worst. Cupcake's story is about system failure, societal ignorance, and a little girl who, as a result, resigned to degradation, depression, deprivation, and defeat. Her story is also about choices -- good ones and bad ones -- and about the possibilities that are there if only we "Pray, trust, work hard, and grab hold!" Most people would have been daunted by the hurdles she faced. Yet, despite enormous fear and grave self-doubt, Cupcake grabbed a hold, prayed, and held on for dear life as she learned that there was another way -- a better way. She sensed a Guiding Hand and discovered that, over time, a network of people were being formed to encourage and guide her along the way. Leaning on this network, Cupcake climbed the long, difficult, and steep ladder to transformation, sobriety, positive change, self-improvement, and triumph.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Crown

Filesize

1.90 MB

Number of Pages

480

eBook ISBN

9780307345479

Awards

• Black Caucus of the America Library Association Award