Book cover of A Piece of Cake: A Memoir

Book description

'Phenomenal woman' The Oprah Magazine
'Dazzles you with the amazing change that is possible in one lifetime.' Washington Post

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This is the heart-wrenching true story of a girl named Cupcake Brown.

Orphan, runaway, addict, all before she was twenty. That's when things got really interesting...

Cupcake was just eleven…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked A Piece of Cake as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

After learning that ‘memoirs’ were a thing and since I’d grown up with a troubled background myself, I wanted to find out if there were stories written by black women who had struggles in life, neglect, or abuse. After intense research I came across this and was not disappointed. Not only does Cupcake experience abuse from a very young age, she becomes an orphan, ends up as an addict and a member of a notorious gang before turning her life around. The emotions of her story are so real and raw, I felt her journey in my heart as the…

Wow, this story I found incredible. It was probably one of the very first true stories involving addiction and dysfunction that I had ever read. A memoir of descent into teenage prostitution and drug addiction, orphaned at 11 years old Cupcake entered into the child welfare system and moved from one disastrous place to another. Incredibly frank I found her world harrowing and terrifying and yet through it emerged a woman who turned her entire life around and showed me that anything is possible if you want it enough. Sometimes you just have to read about someone who has had…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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