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A Piece of Cake: A Memoir, by Cupcake Brown
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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. For the first time she found a family, but when Cupcake was blasted in the back with a 12-gauge shotgun, she was once more taken in by the system.
At 16, her stepfather reeneters her life and engineers an "emancipation," in which the courts declare her an adult and free her, finally, from the child welfare system. Cup takes advantage of her new freedom to start a drug-dealing operation with her stepfather, who also manages a stable of colorful prostitutes. Soon she meets a man, falls in love, and gets married. He convinces her to get a real job and learn to speak proper English--but he also abuses her and introduces her to crack cocaine. Cupcake flits from job to job, miraculously, given that she never fails to show up without some cocktail of narcotics floating in her system.
She hits rock bottom when, in desperation, she steals crack from her drug dealer. He beats her nearly to death, rapes her, and then leaves her body behind a dumpster. Cupcake wakes up days later, not sure of how she ended up in this state and from that moment begins to turn her life around. She was adopted by a lawyer who ran the law firm where she "worked," and slowly he assisted her in kicking the habit--with the help of an eccentric group of fellow addicts who became, at last, a family to her--and catching up on her education. With the support of her new family, she eventurally goes all the way to law school (although not without a few additional misadventures along the way) and joins one of the top law firms in the country.
Cupcake's story is an inspiring, at times hilarious, often distrubing, and deeply moving account of a singular woman who took on the worst of contemporary urban life and survived it with wit and a ferocious will. It updates classic memoirs like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Makes Me Wanna Holler, and gives a bold and gritty spin to contemporary memoirs like Finding Fish. At the center of it, Cupcake is a charming and inspiring narrator through the inferno of her life.
From the Compact Disc edition.
- Sales Rank: #51721 in eBooks
- Published on: 2006-02-28
- Released on: 2006-02-28
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Cupcake Brown (that's her real name) was 11 in 1976 when her mother died. Custody of Brown and her brother was given to a stranger—their birth father—who only wanted their social security checks. He then left them with an abusive foster mother who encouraged her nephew to rape Brown repeatedly. Brown got better and better at running away. A prostitute taught her to drink, smoke marijuana and charge for sex. Her next foster father traded her LSD and cocaine for oral sex. Eventually she went to live with a great-aunt in South Central L.A., where she joined a gang. Almost 16, having barely survived a shooting, she decided to quit gangbanging. Drugs were her new best friends. A boyfriend taught her to freebase, but then there was crack, which was easier. Before long she was a "trash-can junkie," taking anything and everything. It wasn't until she woke up behind a Dumpster one morning, half-dressed and more than half-dead, that she admitted she needed help. Brown conveys this all in gritty detail, and her struggle to come clean and develop her potential—she's now an attorney with a leading California firm and a motivational speaker—ends her story on a high note. Booksellers, watch out—Cupcake's gonna sell like hotcakes.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Cupcake (La'Vette) Brown went from the relative security of life in a working-class neighborhood of San Diego to hardship and uncertainty when, at the age of 11, her mother died. Her estranged biological father lost interest when an expected insurance payout didn't materialize, and Cupcake and her brother were left with a merciless foster mother and her abusive son. Unable to take the mistreatment, Cupcake drifted into a life of prostitution, drug addiction, gang affiliation, stealing, homelessness, and any available means of survival. Her salvation comes in an unlikely group of fellow addicts who encourage her to change. Brown takes the same fortitude it took to survive the streets and uses it to become a lawyer. Her story of survival and triumph is incredible and often rough. Readers who like gritty, urban nonfiction will enjoy this book. Vanessa Bush
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"It dazzles you with the amazing change that is possible in one lifetime. We see a woman learn to build a family from strangers who help her because she is another human being trying to overcome horrendous circumstances. It is a story that is poetic in its simplicity, beautifully stripped to the basics" Washington Post "Extraordinary... An engaging account of a remarkable life filled with pain and wisdom, hope and redemption" San Francisco Chronicle "Her story of survival and triumph is incredible and often rough. Readers who like gritty, urban nonfiction will enjoy this" Booklist "Want to be inspired by a story that's far from run-of-the-mill? Curl up with Cupcake Brown's harrowing, sugar-free memoir..." Marie Claire "Incredibly frank and funny memoir " Closer
Most helpful customer reviews
206 of 216 people found the following review helpful.
Hard Won Redemption
By ProperGander News (Dr. Emil Shuffhausen)
Before this book lifts your spirit and expands your understanding, it will break your heart...on two levels. Brown's personal story of being abused and neglected is a shattering one. If she were the only little girl in America that this had ever happened to, it would still be too much. But when the understanding of another reality sinks in--that there are hundreds of thousands of children out there still being abused as Cupcake Brown was--it's too much to take.
And yet, as you read through unimaginable (at at times, graphic) depictions of Brown's personal hell, you will find your respect and admiration for her growing, as she finally begins her slow ascent, out of the valley of the shadow of death, and into redemption. Coming out of awful abuse, and a life of prostitution on the street, and drug addiction, she finally seeks--and finds--hope, strength, and focus in her relationship with God.
To use a Bible phrase, she "sets her face like flint" to accomplish worthy goals: she gets clean from drugs, she works hard, goes to school, and finally graduates from law school. Today, she is a highly respected lawyer at a top California law firm and a much-sought after motivational speaker.
Re-read the above paragraph, and pause to think about it.
This is not an everyday story. Sadly, the thousands upon thousands of little girls and boys who experience similar tragedy and abuse in their lives never rise above the horrific aftermath. How did Cupcake Brown do it? What makes the outcome of her story so different? What can we all learn from this amazing lady?
Read the book and find out. Some may criticize her writing style or grammar. Not me. (Or is it "not I"? Dang grammar police got me confused. Er, they HAVE me confused.) At any rate, for me, Brown's style is refreshing. It's like sitting down with someone personally and just listening to their heart.
Stories of redemption are my favorite kind. Some people can write and speak eloquently, but have nothing to say. Cupcake Brown's story and message ARE her eloquence. Her gritty determination commands respect, and her faith inspires hope for everyone.
62 of 66 people found the following review helpful.
A remarkable memoir that demonstrates the full range of life's possibilities
By Bookreporter
Let's face it. We all know the expression "You only live once." Or, "Anything is possible if you put your mind to it." No matter how many times we may say these types of things to our friends or to ourselves, there are just as many other times where we brush that "go get 'em" attitude aside in favor of the easy way out because we are too lazy, too afraid, too set in our ways to actually do what it takes to succeed.
In her relentlessly crushing yet ultimately uplifting debut memoir, Cupcake Brown relays the down-and-dirty details of her disaster-prone life with such vigor and frankness that readers will be shocked to realize that she actually made it far enough to work through her problems without giving in to the weight of them, let alone graduate magna cum laude from college (without a high school diploma, I might add), finish law school, pass the bar exam, and publish a bound-to-be bestselling book, all the while remaining completely sober. It is a wonder that one human being could accomplish so much given the circumstances.
When Cupcake was 11 years old, her mother died from an epileptic seizure at the age of 34. Not soon after, Cupcake and her brother Larry were taken from the only father they ever knew and sent to live with their real father, Mr. Burns. Despite the fact that Mr. Burns had never paid child-support or visited his children, he was given legal custody by the state of California. Rather than take care of the kids he never wanted in the first place, he shuffled them off to live in a foster home, run by a violent and viciously manipulative woman who had been accused of "accidentally" killing two of her charges a few years earlier, and whose nephew repeatedly raped Cupcake for his own sick pleasure. Of course, the corrupt "don't see, don't act" child welfare system never stepped in, leaving Cupcake no choice but to run away and try to make it on her own. At 11.
In the coming years, Cupcake would run away from Diane's abusive care a number of times, only to be taken back by the police, a worried neighbor, or a "concerned" social worker. In that time, she became a child prostitute, turning tricks for truck drivers, other foster fathers, and even cops. She smoked pot, drank copious amounts of alcohol and took drugs, from LSD and cocaine to crystal meth. At 13, she was brutally beaten by Diane's daughter and the rest of the foster children living in the house at the time, and consequently lost the baby she was carrying from an unknown father. At 14, she fled to South Central Los Angeles to live with her great-aunt and four male third-cousins, and joined a gang called the Eight-Tray Gangster Crips. Although gang life provided her with the love and support she lacked in the past, it further encouraged her participation in illegal activities (robbing, stealing, dealing), taught her how to use various weapons in drive-by shootings, and deepened her love for and addiction to crack, PCP, and other hard drugs. On her sixteenth birthday, she was shot twice in the back by a rival gang member and was told that she might not ever walk again. But, miraculously, she recovered.
Believe it or not, this all takes place in the first third of the book. Over the next 300 or so pages, Cupcake continues to describe her experiences --- flitting in and out of various 9-to-5 jobs (while still on drugs, mind you), a failed marriage, and dilapidated living arrangements (including, at one point, a dumpster). To say that readers will be amazed that she didn't wind up in jail or dead in an alley from an overdose is a gross understatement.
It is only in the last 100 pages that she actually deals with the logistics of her recovery. With the same strength and determination she used to run her life into the ground, Cupcake embraced the process of recovery. She started going to a 12-step program for recovering addicts and made friends (including her sponsor and surrogate mother) who would change her life for the better. With the support of her unbelievably compassionate boss (she worked as a legal secretary), her family, and her new-and-improved self, she turned her life around to such an extent that anyone familiar with her past (not to mention the reader) would surely find this stable, successful, and sober woman virtually unrecognizable.
To read Cupcake Brown's memoir is to witness the full range of life's possibilities, both positive and negative. In an age where spewing your personal tragedies onto the page and sharing them with billions of scandal-obsessed unknowns has become quite commonplace, it is not surprising that this book will satisfy the likes of Oprah and the primetime media circuit. What makes A PIECE OF CAKE so momentous and different, however, is that Brown's is not a story full of privileged complaints, grandiose generalizations, or race or class inspired clich�s. It is a true story told by a woman in her own vernacular who needed to prove to herself that she could beat all the odds to accomplish the virtually impossible. Remarkable.
--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling
34 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
Yes, It is worth the read!
By Gregory Farnham
I felt this book. We have a foster child (and for those who have never taken in or known a foster child, once you do, your eyes will be open forever). I get this story. I admire this woman, and by the way, her life does happens. it is real. I could not put her book down. Thanks Cupcake Brown for sharing your story. It is inspiring.
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