Book Review by Bonnie
I put off reading this book because I was afraid. I saw Cupcake Brown being interviewed by Montel Williams and began to cry before the five-minute segment was over. Her story is touching. Not graceful and certainly not neat, but touching. That’s why I was afraid to read it. I’m not good at messiness, especially when it involves children.
Miss Brown’s mother died when she was eleven and she and her brother become part of a non-responsive legal system and they were given into the hands of her biological father or “sperm donor” as she calls him in the memoir, A PIECE OF CAKE. He in turn places Cupcake and her brother into a foster care home where he is in league with the evil foster mother, Diane, so that he and Diane may collect foster care checks and social security checks for “taking care” of the children. Diane is a piece of work as a human being. She puts a chain lock on the refrigerator and regularly beats the children and curses them so that they begin to feel subhuman. But even her deeds pale in comparison to the legal and foster care systems that Brown describes. I can only pray that the callousness that she ascribes to the various caseworkers, police officers, judges and the like, were aberrations then and are not being repeated now. But how many times do we scratch the surface and find that we have only just begun to find the truth?
From foster care, Brown descends further. She becomes a prostitute, a drug addict and an alcoholic. Somehow she must do these things to escape her reality and the fact that she has been hurt both physically and mentally by those charged with protecting and caring for her. From this place of no return, Brown must rise and build herself up again. She must be like the mythical Phoenix bird and from the ashes spread her wings and begin to fly, for the first time. But it is the in-between times that wrenches a reader, takes a person beyond what they can stomach sometimes. Brown’s is not a pretty story, the people and systems are ugly villains and it is a true wonder that she made it from where she was to where she is now.
This book was an odyssey. My eyes were opened to the resilience of the human spirit, the capacity for the heart to love and heal itself. While I wouldn’t call this the best-written memoir I’ve ever read, I’d probably say that it was the most heartfelt. Where in America, could you rise from the very ashes of defeat, move from the back of a dumpster and smoking crack, to practicing law at a prestigious firm?
Cupcake Brown is a courageous woman. I’m glad that I read A PIECE OF CAKE. It hurt to read what we allow to happen to our children but it is good to know that there are still some people in this life who are strong enough to turn things around. This is a “must read” book. Highly recommended for older teens. Descriptions of drug use, violence and a lot of profanity make it too adult for younger teens.
Questions to think about:
- a. Do you believe there has been any improvement in the foster care system from the 1970’s to today? What makes you believe the way that you do?
- b. Has the War on Drugs been as successful as it could be? What things do you think the federal government and/or agencies might do to better protect our children?
- c. What’s more important to you as a reader – a well told story or a well-written story? Why?
- d. If you had a chance to go back into your past and let someone have it because of their cruelty to you or to someone else, would you make the choice to follow through? Why or why not?
