Respect and Cupcakes

I am in the middle of reading two books at the moment,my progress has slowed a bit because as you know midterms are upon us :( so No Disrespect is by Sister Souljah and A Piece of Cake is by Cupcake Brown. Yes,her name IS Cupcake and she considers that her "good girl" name her bad girl name for when she does bad things is LaVette. Both books are memoirs and they are exceedingly interesting, again if you want that urban flair with some risque-ness. So Cupcake's story is heartbreaking,especially to me because it could have been avoided if the child services system wasn't so uncaring about the welfare of children, Cupcake and her brother Larry are placed with the literal foster mother from hell after being torn apart from their Dad (who supposedly wasn't their biological Dad) because he wasn't biological they were entrusted to their true father, who was only after the life insurance money from their Mother. The biological father dumps the kids off to a foster home after he finds out that the kids won't get the money until they are 18 and 21, plus their Uncle is in charge of the trust so he has all the power. At the foster home Cupcake and her brother Larry are abused and beaten if they don't clean the whole house everyday. The Mother is really a neat freak and since she has such a big house and keeps it SO clean social services sees her as their best foster parent. The Foster Mother, Diane, actually had to move to a different state after her foster license was revoked for killing a child. So, she switched states and names leaving her former life behind. The system couldn't even find this out because computers weren't around then. The only people who knew that Diane was guilty of killing a foster child are the new foster children whom she threatens with this information every time they fail to clean everything perfectly. Diane allows her nephew to sexually abuse Cupcake whenever he can because she wants him to stay out of trouble before he enters the military. Cupcake runs away for the first time when she is eleven,right into the path of a young prostitute who shows Cupcake how to make money introducing her to the street life. Cupcake only goes with a man once, then decides she doesn't want to give all her money to the pimp she becomes associated with, she runs away. Sitting on a tree stump Cupcake get returned back to her foster home by the police, who blinded by the nice,big ,clean house is fooled into believing nothing is wrong with the situation. Cupcake gets beaten horribly for bringing the cops to the foster home by Diane.

All throughout the book Cupcake runs away and is returned to Diane's house about six to seven times even after people in authority have seen the massive bruises that are the results of the whip Diane uses for discipline. Diane even gets her daughter and some of the other foster girls to attack her while she is pregnant causing her to miscarry. Cupcake finally leaves for good and is introduced to drugs and exchanging rides to different places for sex...until she is reunited with her Uncle. Unfortunately her Dad is in on the same things that she did before coming back home, they sell drugs together and sink into a lifestyle that could have killed them both. At one point Cupcake is even in a sect of the Crips ,until she is forced to go back to Diane's by the legal system.

In No Disrespect Sister Souljah provides a look back on her life,growing up on welfare and hatred for the situation,poverty. Her mother was a strong woman and taught her not to let men run your life, as well as not to poison yourself with drugs and alcohol. As she grew up her mother became softer,she stopped teaching her kids how to be strong. So she became the only child who knew right from wrong. She was very interested in the Black situation in American, even went to Rutger University to study Black Affairs and American History.

The Stories in the book are about how she dated a few men in college who exemplified everything wrong with Black men in America today. They are depressed by self loathing and being shared among black women because most of them are in jail. She creates programs for kids in the ghetto who live in welfare hotels to get them out and save their lives. The programs she creates are to save the kids who otherwise would end up in jail or dead because of where they grew up and learned how to survive.