A Piece Of Cake: A Memoir

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2006

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-11

Chapters 12-20

Chapters 21-29

Chapters 30-44

Chapter 45-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Developing, Experiencing, and Overcoming Addiction

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to child neglect and abuse, rape, sexual abuse, underage sex work, substance misuse, and domestic violence.

Cupcake’s youth and early adulthood were defined by her many addictions and the total hold that they had over her person and her life. Cupcake was introduced to alcohol in her most vulnerable state, when she was only 11 years old and her mother had just died. Pete is the person who first gave her alcohol, after which he then raped her. Cupcake immediately learned that alcohol made horrible experiences more tolerable, and she sought it out after that.

Cupcake was soon introduced to cannabis through Candy, a sex worker she met the first time she ran away. The effect was similar; Cupcake noticed that cannabis and alcohol, especially combined, made the experience of sex work more tolerable:

The lessons were clear: men want you only for sex; sex makes you money; money bought necessities like food, shelter, booze, and drugs; drugs and booze make life—and the sex—not so bad. Most important, doing anything anywhere was better—and safer—than just sitting at Diane’s waiting for the next beating (52).

Cupcake started hanging out with other kids who drank and used drugs, and with each passing month she became more dependent on their effects. Mr. Bassinet, who gave Cupcake a false sense of protection and security, eventually gave Cupcake harder substances like LSD and cocaine.

Not only did Cupcake find that substances and alcohol help her deal with the present, but they also allowed her to forget about the past: “Most importantly, turning tricks allowed me to buy drugs and booze that helped me forget my past, ignore the present, and be absolutely oblivious to the future” (78). Cupcake was still only a child when she got alcohol poisoning for the first time, but for many years she was not deterred from using it. She later was introduced to substances like methamphetamine, PCP, and heroin.

Cupcake’s substance use became much worse before it improved. Like other people, it was not until she hit rock bottom and was within death’s reach that Cupcake saw the true severity of her circumstances. Cupcake started selling drugs to support her substance use, and she started to believe that as long as she could afford to support her substance use, she must be in some sense successful.

Cupcake started to experience blackouts which prevented her from realizing how “ignorant and hostile” she often acted while inebriated (175). When she was told that she had a “drug problem,” she attempted to solve it by enrolling in school and finding a job, further denying the extent of her addiction. The person she was when under the influence of substances and alcohol began to conflict with the person she wanted to be: “I was indeed becoming a mothafuckin’ legal secretary—on dope” (246).

Looking back on this time in her life, Cupcake clearly explains the flawed logic behind her thinking and actions and how this flawed logic harmed her ability to see her life accurately: “I really believed that if I could stop and start crack at will, I couldn’t have a problem with anything” (248). Even when she began selling off everything she owned and blacked out at her own wedding, she could not admit to herself that she had a problem. In hindsight, Cupcake reflects on how this is the very nature of addiction: Cupcake told herself whatever was necessary to keep her from feeling the guilt and responsibility of what she was doing to herself.

Cupcake was starving, without a home, and close to death when she finally realized that she needed help. Having figured that she tried everything else, she turned to God, and hoped that he could help her find the strength and tools to recover from her addiction and live a healthy life. A voice told her to talk to Ken, who got Cupcake admitted to a rehabilitation center. Admitting that she had a drug problem was the first true step in Cupcake’s recovery, and asking for help, although difficult for her, was necessary.

In the rehabilitation center, Cupcake said goodbye to substances and alcohol and learned the ways that addiction develop and persists. She learned that she was one of many people who resorted to substances and alcohol to cover her pain and her past. Cupcake found that she related most to Venita, whose stories of feeling ugly, selling her belongings, and using all different types of substances, felt like a mirror to Cupcake’s own life. Cupcake saw a potential self in Venita and wanted what Venita had achieved. Venita sponsored Cupcake and acted as her pillar of support through the recovery process. Cupcake also had to learn to deal with her cravings on her own, or by calling someone whenever she felt the desire to use. She soon realized that the energy and dedication she put into getting high could be put toward her career, and that sense of motivation is what gave her the strength to stay sober and achieve true success.

Perseverance, Survival, and Transformation

Cupcake’s life exemplifies perseverance, survival, and transformation. What Cupcake endured in her youth, on the one hand, and the direction her life eventually took once she began her recovery, on the other hand, are starkly different from one another.

Cupcake’s early childhood was relatively ordinary, although she and her brother did not get along and would often attack one another. Cupcake believes that her experiences with her brother gave her a thicker skin and the fighting spirit that she took with her after her mother died. Cupcake hardly had time to grieve the loss of her mother, because she was almost immediately taken from her remaining family and sent to live in foster care. Finding her mother dead was the beginning of a life of addiction, crime, and despair, of which Cupcake herself saw no way out. In foster care, Cupcake endured all forms of abuse but refused to allow herself to be defeated by it. she was not immune to the effects of the abuse, however, and when she was beaten and lost a pregnancy, it permanently changed her attitude toward having children.

Cupcake spent her youth drifting from home to home, joining a gang, and doing whatever else was necessary to support her substance and alcohol use. In adulthood, Cupcake’s addiction continued, and she endured domestic abuse for five years in her relationship with Tommy. At the same time, Cupcake’s addictions became more and more severe, and she was unable to think about anything but how to get more drugs.

It is Tommy, ironically, who plants the seed in Cupcake that begins her transformation. He tells her to go to school, find work, and change the way she talks. Cupcake spent months practicing “proper” speech, earned a diploma, and found work in the legal field. Despite her successes, her addictions persisted, and she struggled to keep work or a place to live. Still, these small seeds of change would eventually be the catalyst for much more significant personal transformation. Cupcake also meets Preacher, who tells her, “I bet you’ve been through things that others can only imagine. You have been places others never return from. That is why you are going to touch so many people” (375). Meeting Preacher was another small seed of change as he made her feel like her life mattered.

In an additional irony, Cupcake never realized the determination and persistence required to support her substance use disorder and how that persistence could be transformed into a positive. These traits that were always within her acted as the tools through which she was finally able to overcome her addiction. Recovery was a difficult process that took several years and the support of people like Venita, who refused to give up on Cupcake. After working through her addictions, Cupcake went to university and then law school, using her fighting spirit to become a successful lawyer.

Cupcake shares that she is unashamed in discussing her past, because she knows that her past actions do not define the person she is or was. Cupcake also credits her relationship with God and the unconditional love and support she felt from God as helping guide her to be the person she is today.

Staying True to Oneself Versus Wanting to Belong

Throughout her life, Cupcake had to choose between staying true to who she was or the need to belong. She could never seem to unite these two needs within herself, until she found the support and love of a real family during recovery. In the book, Cupcake encapsulates this tension through her two names: Cupcake is who she was, while who she had to be to survive was La’Vette.

Cupcake experienced early assaults on her dignity and identity that challenged her ability to remember who she was. She was given substances and alcohol at a young age and was also raped multiple times. Each of these experiences threatened Cupcake’s persistent, strong, indomitable spirit. Cupcake recounts how, during this time, people all around her tried to change her and turn her into something she was not. The further she sunk into addiction, the more Cupcake lost who she was, until eventually she no longer knew what her true personality was.

Cupcake’s need to be loved as she was motivated her actions as she grew up. She was readily accepted into gang life and found that the sense of community there was something she had long been missing: “It was then that I knew that as long as they loved me and accepted me, I could learn to hate red. Fuck it, I told myself. I’ll find a new favorite color” (113). In exchange for the sense of community, though, Cupcake had to sacrifice her own personal morals. She was taught to “love the gang more than […] family” and to put the gang’s needs before her own (118).

After leaving the gang, Cupcake began prioritizing drug and alcohol use above all else, and the worse this became, the more she craved acceptance and belonging. Cupcake’s need for “affection, protection, and security” led to her being constantly confused about what was acceptable or unacceptable treatment (125). She told herself that grown men who used her for sex were, at the very least, paying attention to her. In the book, Cupcake frames all these choices as a consequence of the fact that all she ever really wanted was the guidance and support of a true family: “There was a line in that book that said the color purple just wanted to be loved like everything else, like me” (126).

After almost two decades of being lost within a haze of substance use, Cupcake reached her lowest point and finally realized that she did not recognize the person she had become. She no longer knew who she was or what she wanted out of life; all she knew was that she was not ready to die.

In recovery and through the support network she gained, Cupcake discovered who she really was. She learned that she is not the angry, rowdy person she was while using drugs, and that she is just as worthy of love as anyone else. People like Venita, Ken, and many of Cupcake’s other friends in recovery and at work gave her the solidarity she needed to overcome her addictions and discover her potential as a lawyer. Cupcake realized that “[f]amily are people who love you—whoever that may be” and that it is not blood but shared experiences and understanding that makes a family (400).