a piece of cake a memoir by cupcake brown

She was routinely abused by her sadistic foster mother, yet no matter how many times she escaped, the perversely ineffectual legal system insisted on returning her to her tormentor. On her second night in a foster home, Brown was raped on the bathroom floor. Everything plunged downhill from there, as Brown relates in a narrative couched in street slang interspersed with interior monologues (literary devices that the author at times fails to pull off). Honors and advanced placement students.Harrowing, earnest autobiography takes readers on a tour from incomprehensible evil through unexpected kindness to eventual triumph.īrown’s story begins in January 1976, when, at age 11, she discovered the body of her mother, dead from a seizure, on the bedroom floor of their home in a San Diego ghetto. Help librarians and teachers working in high schools where there are S-Recommended for senior high school students.Ī-Recommended for advanced students and adults. Turpin is anĮxceptional narrator, bringing passion and fire to the wild, emotional Of those characters, she found spiritual redemption. 'attitude' of the heroines of urban fiction but, unlike many The physical, emotional, and psychological havoc caused by drugĪddiction and the life that often leads to it. This is a harrowing narrative that spares the listener no detail of She embraced the 12 Steps, relapsed, wentīack into recovery, and finally found healing and success. She was lucky toĬultivate enough friends outside 'the life' who cared for herĪnd who were willing to help. CupcakeĮscaped both, but reached bottom in her addiction. Well-often death in gang shoot-outs or prison for hustling. The tough girls, like Cupcake, may turn to gang life for a sense ofīelonging, false dignity, and protection, but that comes with a price as Self-medication with drugs and alcohol quickly becomes the primary need.

Prostitution provides cash for the basics but, unfortunately, Like Cupcake, they run, are found, brought back, runĪgain, and go to even worse situations until reaching a fragile, stuntedĪdulthood.

Gone awry, where children are put into deplorably exploitive and abusiveįoster homes. Cupcake was a victim of a child welfare system I'm a librarian at a women's prison where I witness so A piece of cake: a memoir.' Retrieved from A piece of cake: a memoir.' The Free Library.

A piece of cake a memoir by cupcake brown