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A review by lpm100
A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown
Did not finish book. Stopped at 27%.
Book Review
A Piece of Cake
1/5 stars
"Too many improbable events all at once. A waste of $6.59 and 3 hours of reading time."
*******
At first I had thought that "If this really happened in quite the way that she said it did, she might be hamming it up a bit "
By the 9th chapter, that had changed to "This is totally implausible."
By page 126, I knew I had been duped.
Let me just put out there how many books I've read like this that were not believable/ of questionable accuracy:
1. Thoughts From a Unicorn (Shais Rishon)
2. Mountain Family (Tzeril Rus Berger)
3. A Long Way Gone (Ishmael Beah)
4. Manchild in the Promised Land (Claude Brown)
There's also a whole genre of literature that is written about hoaxes.
1. Anthony Godby Johnson hoax (book: "A Rock and A Hard Place")
2. Kaycee Nicole hoax (a blog)
3. Kodee Kennings hoax (newspaper articles, etc)
It would actually have been better if these events had never happened; I get so sick of stories about semi-literate, uneducated, criminal black people that can't speak English and can't conceive of doing anything other than doping / drinking and flash mobs (which were happening even in the 1970s, if you believe this book).
Just.....some of the unlikely things that happened here:
1. The abusive foster mother seems like some of her behaviors were lifted right out of Joan Crawford's biography written by her stepdaughter (serving half cooked chicken, etc.)
2. Everything seems to happen within 30 seconds of the author's changing situations/making a decision. She walked right out of a house, and within less than 10 minutes runs into a prostitute and 10 minutes after that is turning tricks (as an 11-year-old).
3. It never takes more than 5 minutes for her to convince somebody to buy liquor for a 12-year-old.
4. She was interested in weed and alcohol 3 minutes after she took her first hit. And within 15 pages is a pot-smoking Mad Dog-swilling hardcore hooker.
5. After 3 days sleeping in a park waiting for Western Union (strange, because this was 40 years after Western Union had developed the technology to send money instantly)
Again, at 12.
6. She is shuttled to her second foster home within 61 pages, and it is even bigger than the last place she left from. And the foster mother was also bad, and there was more sexual abuse. (What is the probability that this girl would have that many living relatives alive and yet get sent away from them and shunted directly into a foster home?)
7. It seems like she is "jumped in" to the gang after about a week. I've watched documentaries, and they consistently say that these gang members want to watch you for a little while before they think about accepting a recruit.
8. p.126 is the point at which I had to put the book down. Cupcake says that "there's a line in the book that said 'the color purple just wanted to be loved like everything else.'"
CONTINUITY ERROR: "The Color Purple" was written in 1982. She would have been 17 years old at that time.
But, she claims to have been reading "The Color Purple" at 15--which would have been in 1980-- 2 years before the book was actually written.
*******
There is the over-the-top use of Negro Dialect in her prose, and that is actually a problem:
1. I've seen her in interviews, and she speaks normal English.
2. Also, even black people who speak in... "that way" don't write in "that way." (All the books that I have read and I can only remember EXACTLY ONE That was written completely in Negro Dialect: "The Goophered Grapevine," by Charles Chestnutt.)
3. The changing between these forms of English is effortless and everybody seems to know when/how to do it. (All of my relatives know when to do it. If somebody is speaking publicly at a funeral or a family reunion, then it's done all in normal English.)
4. Claude Brown had the same type of speech in his book ("He was getting mannish in the closet with a high yaller girl,") and I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk that way except maybe Halle Berry when she tried to play a tragic mulatto slave character. (It should tell you something that her acting is so bad that she won the razzie award.)
Verdict: Not recommended. I spend $6.59 and probably about 3 hours worth of reading time, and I can't get it back.
A Piece of Cake
1/5 stars
"Too many improbable events all at once. A waste of $6.59 and 3 hours of reading time."
*******
At first I had thought that "If this really happened in quite the way that she said it did, she might be hamming it up a bit "
By the 9th chapter, that had changed to "This is totally implausible."
By page 126, I knew I had been duped.
Let me just put out there how many books I've read like this that were not believable/ of questionable accuracy:
1. Thoughts From a Unicorn (Shais Rishon)
2. Mountain Family (Tzeril Rus Berger)
3. A Long Way Gone (Ishmael Beah)
4. Manchild in the Promised Land (Claude Brown)
There's also a whole genre of literature that is written about hoaxes.
1. Anthony Godby Johnson hoax (book: "A Rock and A Hard Place")
2. Kaycee Nicole hoax (a blog)
3. Kodee Kennings hoax (newspaper articles, etc)
It would actually have been better if these events had never happened; I get so sick of stories about semi-literate, uneducated, criminal black people that can't speak English and can't conceive of doing anything other than doping / drinking and flash mobs (which were happening even in the 1970s, if you believe this book).
Just.....some of the unlikely things that happened here:
1. The abusive foster mother seems like some of her behaviors were lifted right out of Joan Crawford's biography written by her stepdaughter (serving half cooked chicken, etc.)
2. Everything seems to happen within 30 seconds of the author's changing situations/making a decision. She walked right out of a house, and within less than 10 minutes runs into a prostitute and 10 minutes after that is turning tricks (as an 11-year-old).
3. It never takes more than 5 minutes for her to convince somebody to buy liquor for a 12-year-old.
4. She was interested in weed and alcohol 3 minutes after she took her first hit. And within 15 pages is a pot-smoking Mad Dog-swilling hardcore hooker.
5. After 3 days sleeping in a park waiting for Western Union (strange, because this was 40 years after Western Union had developed the technology to send money instantly)
Again, at 12.
6. She is shuttled to her second foster home within 61 pages, and it is even bigger than the last place she left from. And the foster mother was also bad, and there was more sexual abuse. (What is the probability that this girl would have that many living relatives alive and yet get sent away from them and shunted directly into a foster home?)
7. It seems like she is "jumped in" to the gang after about a week. I've watched documentaries, and they consistently say that these gang members want to watch you for a little while before they think about accepting a recruit.
8. p.126 is the point at which I had to put the book down. Cupcake says that "there's a line in the book that said 'the color purple just wanted to be loved like everything else.'"
CONTINUITY ERROR: "The Color Purple" was written in 1982. She would have been 17 years old at that time.
But, she claims to have been reading "The Color Purple" at 15--which would have been in 1980-- 2 years before the book was actually written.
*******
There is the over-the-top use of Negro Dialect in her prose, and that is actually a problem:
1. I've seen her in interviews, and she speaks normal English.
2. Also, even black people who speak in... "that way" don't write in "that way." (All the books that I have read and I can only remember EXACTLY ONE That was written completely in Negro Dialect: "The Goophered Grapevine," by Charles Chestnutt.)
3. The changing between these forms of English is effortless and everybody seems to know when/how to do it. (All of my relatives know when to do it. If somebody is speaking publicly at a funeral or a family reunion, then it's done all in normal English.)
4. Claude Brown had the same type of speech in his book ("He was getting mannish in the closet with a high yaller girl,") and I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk that way except maybe Halle Berry when she tried to play a tragic mulatto slave character. (It should tell you something that her acting is so bad that she won the razzie award.)
Verdict: Not recommended. I spend $6.59 and probably about 3 hours worth of reading time, and I can't get it back.