A Piece of Cake: A Memoir | 
 enlarge | Author: Cupcake Brown
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  170 reviews
Sales Rank: 8893
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
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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 165 more reviews...
 Pleasant...but a little long December 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoyed this book and have much respect for the author for surviving through some of the difficult moments. The ending wasn't quite as good as I hoped for, but the journey to the end was a pleasant one even if it did take awhile to get there.
 Entertaining yet fabricated November 15, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Definitely kept me entertained, yet came across as being fabricated. For example, she talked about how the night before she got married, they partied so hard they didn't go to bed until 7. Huh....anyone that parties know you just stay up. Also, when she was talking about how skinny she was, and how she had to wear 2 pairs of pants and stuff so people wouldn't realize how skinny she was, when she was 5'5" and 120 pounds. Which is definitely thin, but it's still on the healthy side, I bet that's what she just wished she weighed. Plus EVERYONE she comes into contact with is some sort of cliche, there are no normal people anywhere. There is no way ANY employer would let someone get away with the stuff she supposedly did, like take off 15 days in a month. And the whole stuff with God and "god having a special plan for her" was hella annoying.
I think books like this, and "A Million Little Pieces" can be dangerous because people read it and think "oh, well I'm not smoking PCP and crackrocks and taking every single kind of drug known to man" that I'm okay.
 Very good book! October 5, 2008
I really enjoyed this book. I could not put it down. I found it to be a very honest, emotional, and raw account of her life. I am just amazed at how she could overcome all of the things that she went through. Her story could certainly become a best selling movie!! The best book I read in a long time.
WOW!!! AMazing story September 22, 2008
This book was so intresting from page 1. Cupcakes' life is amazing to me and I find it beautiful that was able to survive and find peace in her life. She deserves it after all the crap she went through.
Could not put it down September 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have to say, the cover of this book is what caught my eye at the store. Bright, in your face, and cheesy. But the inside, was filet mignon. It was AMAZING. I could not put it down. I missed nights of sleep, saying to myself, "go to bed after this next chapter" and yet at the end of each, I could not help myself from going to the next.
Bravo Cupcake, you have written an amazing book. It was a fantastic story, moving , inspiring, and worthy of becoming a movie. The best part is, it is such an easy read.
I will be reading it again soon.
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