A Piece of Cake: A Memoir | 
| Author: Cupcake Brown
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  156 reviews
Sales Rank: 31288
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1400052297
Dewey Decimal Number: 979.498500496073092
EAN: 9781400052295
ASIN: 1400052297
Publication Date: April 10, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, or homelessness.
Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she’d even turned twenty.
And that’s when things got interesting….
You have in your hands the strange, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating tale of a woman named Cupcake. It begins as the story of a girl orphaned twice over, once by the death of her mother and then again by a child welfare system that separated her from her stepfather and put her into the hands of an epically sadistic foster parent. But there comes a point in her preteen years—maybe it’s the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once—when Cupcake’s story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark comic blues opera. As Cupcake’s troubles grow, so do her voice and spirit. Her gut-punch sense of humor and eye for the absurd, along with her outsized will, carry her through a fateful series of events that could easily have left her dead.
Young Cupcake learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor, partying like a rock star, and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs. But Cupcake’s unlikely tour through the cubicle world was paralleled by a quickening descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine use, till she eventually found herself living behind a Dumpster.
Astonishingly, she turned it around. With the help of a cobbled together family of eccentric fellow addicts and “angels”—a series of friends and strangers who came to her aid at pivotalmoments—she slowly transformed her life from the inside out.
A Piece of Cake is unlike any memoir you’ll ever read. Moving and almost transgressive in its frankness, it is a relentlessly gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contem-porary urban life and survived it with a furious wit and unyielding determination. Cupcake Brown is a dynamic and utterly original storyteller who will guide you on the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you’ll ever take.
When it came time for me to talk, I wasn’t sure which parts of my past to tell, which to keep secret, and which to pretend never happened. Uncle Jr. had already seen the welts on my back, so he wasn’t too surprised when I told them about some of the physical abuse I endured at Diane’s. Everyone else hit the roof, except Daddy. He got really quiet and started balling and unballing his fists.
I continued my update. Experience had taught me that adults have trouble accepting the idea of children having sex. I decided that from then on, that part of my life never happened. I picked up the story by telling them about Fly, the Gangstas, and getting shot.
I was dying for a cigarette. So it seemed a good time to announce that I smoked cigarettes—and weed.
After a moment Sam looked at me, smiled, and handed me one of her Marlboros. I preferred menthols, but beggars can’t be choosers. I kicked back, took a long drag, and closed my eyes.
Daddy and Jr. were silent. They seemed a bit shocked and unsure about how to respond.
“Well, Cup,” Jr. said, “it’s a little too late to be trying to raise you now. But those cigarettes will kill you. And weed will only lead you to stronger drugs.”
He didn’t know how right he was. But for me, it was too late to be worrying about stronger drugs—the only worrying I did was whether I could find a connection to get some. So I just smiled, nodded, and took another hit off my cigarette.
The eerie quiet returned.
—from A Piece of Cake
Also available as a Random House AudioBook and eBook.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 151 more reviews...
 Amazing what people go through July 7, 2008
I am just shocked what people will do to others and how greedy they are. This book just opened my eyes a bit more to our culture and how it is "all about me"
 Very touching story, but just too repetitious for me! June 30, 2008
This was a good book and some of things that happened to Cupcake just broke my heart. I couldn't imagine being in her shoes as a child or an adult. However, half way through the book I began to get very bored with the drug use that was described. It just seemed as if she was in the same slump for a long time. I got almost to the end and put the book down - I was just tired of it. I would recommend this book because it is truly inspiring. Cupcake came a long way and it is almost unbelievable that she landed on her feet.
... and I have to agree with some of the other comments. Some of the stuff that Cupcake talked about just didn't seem 100% true.
 A Piece of Fake? Four stars entertaining One star believable June 25, 2008
This book could could be categorized as fiction and it still would sell.
Does it remind you of A Thousand Little Pieces? Yes, too much does not sound believable. Why? She claimed to have lied on her resumes to get hired in law firms and for several office jobs. How did she managed to stay employed as long as she claimed when she came to work high? How did she manage to be competent at work while being high? And no one checked her references and checked out her background? How does she recall so much detail when she was using drugs, pills and alcohol? Her friends she claimed also helped with memories. But many of her friends were getting high with her. The times when she wrote about experiences they were written as if she was alone and she claimed to be high. So, how does she recall so much, while claiming to be so high and no one was with her to recall the incidents as she claimed to remember?
Waste of Time June 19, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book could have been 120 pages but with all the lies she make it over 400 pages. If you can get this book from the library or a friend please do so. I had to read it for my bookclub but was very disspointed. She repeated a lot of stuff and it was hard to beleive most of it.
 Could not put it down! What an inspirational tale! June 13, 2008
This book is a great read for anyone who likes memoirs. This book is as good as it gets. Cupcake's struggles through her life will make anyone feel for her. She has a way of telling her stories that just completely draws you in. As soon as I received the book, I picked it up to read a chapter and could NOT put it down! I read the whole thing straight. I put the book down for a moment to take my dog outside and my sister picked it up in that brief time period. When I returned to resume my reading, my sister was already on the fifth chapter and did NOT want to put it down either. She let me continue ONLY on the condition that as soon as I am done that I let her finish. Well, that was easy! I had it for her the next day :) Cupcake is an inspiration and her story makes you feel like if the fact that if she has overcome the obstacles that she had been challenged with, anyone can! The best part is that now she is an prominent lawyer as well as a motivational speaker. You can't get a better deal in my mind. A spell-binding memoir read that you can not stop reading that ends up with such a feel good ending that most tales like this cease to have. I think the title is very clever as well. Anyway, as you can tell I can not say enough good things about this book. After reading it, I wished I had bought it right when it came out when she was on tour for her book signing because she is someone that you makes you wish you had the chance to meet and just talk to even if only for a brief moment! 5 stars!
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