A Piece Of Cake: A Memoir

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

Cupcake grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Southern California. During the 1970s, various gangs formed across Los Angeles and surrounding areas, including the Crips and Bloods. In the 1980s, the introduction of crack cocaine led to a rise in gang activity along with severe addiction, particularly among people in disadvantaged communities. This period became known as the “crack epidemic” because of how quickly and widely it spread.

The reason crack cocaine heavily impacted disadvantaged communities was because, compared with powder cocaine, crack cocaine was somewhat more affordable while still producing a euphoria, albeit while also being highly addictive. As addiction to crack went up, so did its demand and production. Similarly, those who were addicted to crack frequently resorted to crime to support their substance use. This created an excuse for local law enforcement, as well as the FBI and CIA, to target areas where crack usage was high and arrest people en masse. The issue reached a point where the CIA was directly accused of setting up and supplying crack to these neighborhoods to facilitate arrests, although the agency denied the accusations (Delaval, Craig. “Cocaine, Conspiracy Theories & the C.I.A. in Central America.” Frontline).

Cupcake’s autobiography covers almost three decades of her life, beginning in the mid-1970s when she was 11 years old and reaching until her mid-30s and the early 2000s. Cupcake’s young life was defined by her struggles with addiction to various drugs and alcohol. She describes constantly trying to relive her first high, and never being able to achieve it. Much of her addiction was the product of the culture in which she lived, and the experiences that pushed her to seek the support of other people with substance issues, gangs, and the attention of older men. As Cupcake found herself caught up in this rise of hard drugs and gangs, she fell into a pattern of addiction and crime as a result.

Apart from the drug epidemic, the shortcomings of foster care in the United States, often characterized as a “broken” system, also deeply shaped Cupcake’s experiences as a child. Many of the children who are put in foster care are sent to live in homes that neglect and/or abuse them. Since parents who take in foster children are paid up to $2,600 per month per child, many take in foster children because they are incentivized by money rather than by a desire to better a child’s life. Cupcake was sent back to Diane’s repeatedly, despite evidence of physical abuse and her own claims of abuse. Similarly, Cupcake was given over to Mr. Burns because he was the biological father, without any consideration of who might actually be the best parent for her. This also plays a part in the proliferation of gangs, since abusive foster homes cause children and teens to feel helpless and alone, causing them to seek out the sense of community provided by a gang. The Crips, who are based primarily in Southern California, are one of the most infamous gangs in the United States, and it is estimated that the gang has over 30,000 members among its various subsets.

Along with her experiences in foster care and gangs, Cupcake also had firsthand experiences of rehabilitation and the 12-step program started by Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935. The program began as a way for people with alcohol addiction to come together, share stories, and inspire and support one another. It lays out a list of assignments and necessary changes to one’s mentality and actions in order to recover from addiction. The program has since been expanded into Narcotics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous, as the same 12-step program is effective for a wide variety of addictions.