I heard about this book when it first came out last year and have been meaning to read it for awhile. This is a memoir written by a woman practicing law at a big firm in San Francisco. But, before she broke into the corporate world, she had to overcome a horrible childhood. Her mother died when she was 11 and in an unbelievable example of how screwed up our child welfare system is, she ends up in a foster home. With a physically abusive foster mother only interested in checks from the government, Brown is then raped by the foster mother's nephew. Brown runs away repeatedly, turning tricks for money, and delving deeper and deeper into alcohol and drugs to numb herself from the horrible hell that has become her life. Each time she runs back into the law, she is sent back to her foster home, despite obvious evidence of abuse. Assuming all the events chronicles in the book are true (ever since Frey, I am quite skeptical), this is a truly amazing life story. How this woman did not end up in jail, dead or HIV positive is nothing short of a miracle. At times it felt like the bad things were piled on a bit too thick and it was all just too depressing. But, once Brown makes the difficult decision to turn her life around, things start looking up - and while her struggle to the top is painful to read, it is truly incredible.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
A Piece of Cake - Cupcake Brown
I heard about this book when it first came out last year and have been meaning to read it for awhile. This is a memoir written by a woman practicing law at a big firm in San Francisco. But, before she broke into the corporate world, she had to overcome a horrible childhood. Her mother died when she was 11 and in an unbelievable example of how screwed up our child welfare system is, she ends up in a foster home. With a physically abusive foster mother only interested in checks from the government, Brown is then raped by the foster mother's nephew. Brown runs away repeatedly, turning tricks for money, and delving deeper and deeper into alcohol and drugs to numb herself from the horrible hell that has become her life. Each time she runs back into the law, she is sent back to her foster home, despite obvious evidence of abuse. Assuming all the events chronicles in the book are true (ever since Frey, I am quite skeptical), this is a truly amazing life story. How this woman did not end up in jail, dead or HIV positive is nothing short of a miracle. At times it felt like the bad things were piled on a bit too thick and it was all just too depressing. But, once Brown makes the difficult decision to turn her life around, things start looking up - and while her struggle to the top is painful to read, it is truly incredible.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment