A Piece of Cake: A Memoir

I used to work at a big law firm. I monitored layoffs like the weather, and they followed a particular pattern: people who failed the Bar two times, women who had miscarriages or were pregnant, gay women, gay men, white guys with zero aptitude for firm life. I knew that I was approaching the Venn diagram of layoffs as my billable hours began to decrease and more black people were added to the firm. You only need so many black people to be considered diverse. When my time came, coincidentally, I became cognizant of another black female big law associate who seemed to be my mirror image in that we were opposites, but clearly she was stronger and able to survive longer than I could. I was not jealous or begrudging of her success, but it proved to me what I was beginning to learn. I followed the recipe for “success” and completely failed. She clearly took another path and accomplished what I couldn’t. The best part was that she wrote a book about her life so I could discover exactly where we diverged in minute detail. Because I did not think that it was healthy to do so after such a tumultuous turning point for me, I waited to read her book.
Fourteen years later, I finally got to read Cupcake Brown’s A Piece of Cake: A Memoir. Well, damn. My life may not be a crystal stair, but it was comparatively. She would be able to survive at a big law firm because it is nothing in comparison to the life that she lived. In the first 35 pages of the 470 page hardcover book, she experienced more tragedy than most people experience in a lifetime. When being a gangster is actually an optimistic turning point for the author, you know that her life was rough.
Despite all the incredible hardships, A Piece of Cake: A Memoir is never monotonous or repetitive. It is shocking, but Brown never tries to elicit sympathy from her reader or allow bitterness to seep through her retelling. If you are the kind person who can’t imagine the humanity of a person whom you perceive to be bad based on external factors such as appearance, drug use, promiscuity, violence, profanity then this autobiography may make you realize that the person before you is actually having a good day in comparison to what you are not seeing. If you can’t empathize after reading about Brown’s life, you probably need to reevaluate your life and start counting your blessings.
Ultimately, A Piece of Cake: A Memoir is a testimony of how God and people saved her from a tragic end and a reckoning of how the many ways that people slip through the cracks from a system that cares more about rules and appearances than souls.