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binasbookpage 's review for:
A Piece of Cake: A Memoir
by Cupcake Brown
I always have a hard time articulating a response to a memoir. Cupcake Brown was failed by a foster care system that was supposed to care for her after her mother died when she was 11. She was taken from the people that loved her and thrown into an abusive household that forced her down a path of rape, gang violence, drug abuse, and homelessness. It would be fifteen years before she "slept in total peace and with absolute serenity... completely clean and sober," and more than ten years after that before she continued her education to become an attorney.
This is a popular title with the teens I work with so I thought I'd read it. For me, Brown's memoir was a window into the life of a child forced to grow up too fast and the mind of a teen just trying to survive, no matter the cost.
It was also a constant exercise in empathy; like a lot of people who are uninvolved with gangs, sex work, and drug abuse, I understand the environmental and societal causes underlying them, but never really KNEW what they were like. (I can almost HEAR y'all saying "wow, how naive," but I'm not about to sit here like a smug "woke" liberal and pretend I know things). I am humbled to have read Cupcake Brown's story about her decades-long fight for survival and the right to live and dream without abuse.
This is a popular title with the teens I work with so I thought I'd read it. For me, Brown's memoir was a window into the life of a child forced to grow up too fast and the mind of a teen just trying to survive, no matter the cost.
It was also a constant exercise in empathy; like a lot of people who are uninvolved with gangs, sex work, and drug abuse, I understand the environmental and societal causes underlying them, but never really KNEW what they were like. (I can almost HEAR y'all saying "wow, how naive," but I'm not about to sit here like a smug "woke" liberal and pretend I know things). I am humbled to have read Cupcake Brown's story about her decades-long fight for survival and the right to live and dream without abuse.