#this audiobook about the menthol cigarette is also getting me

[girderednerve]

when i was an undergraduate student haplessly working on my (very bad) honors thesis about medieval money & its various social problems, one of the best pieces of advice i got was from a fellow student, who told me that her philosophy is that we must sincerely, if temporarily, believe that the chunk of history we are working on is the most important thing in human history. it isn't, of course, it never is, but you still have to believe that—you have to see the web of connections that make the past so vibrantly real in the present, and you have to know that the documents you're looking at illuminate something unique, something vital, to our understanding of the world. i mean, in practice, were we both pretentious? yes, but i still think this attitude towards the world—the sincere belief that any part of it could, at any moment, snap into sharp & overwhelming focus, no matter how temporally removed—is good & true

[f6dxy91-blog]

A Piece of Cake: A Memoir Read Ar Books Online Free

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A Piece of Cake: A Memoir Read Ar Books Online Free

There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, or homelessness. Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she'd even turned twenty. And that's when things got interesting. You have in your hands the strange, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating tale of a woman named Cupcake. It begins as the story of a girl orphaned twice over, once by the death of her mother and then again by a child welfare system that separated her from her stepfather and put her into the hands of an epically sadistic foster parent. But there comes a point in her preteen years maybe it's the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once when Cupcake's story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark comic blues opera. As Cupcake's troubles grow, so do her voice and spirit. Her gut-punch sense of humor and eye for the absurd, along with her outsized will, carry her through a fateful series of events that could easily have left her dead. Young Cupcake learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor, partying like a rock star, and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs. But Cupcake's unlikely tour through the cubicle world was paralleled by a quickening descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine use, till she eventually found herself living behind a Dumpster. Astonishingly, she turned it around. With the help of a cobbled together family of eccentric fellow addicts and angels a series of friends and strangers who came to her aid at pivotalmoments she slowly transformed her life from the inside out. A Piece of Cake is unlike any memoir you'll ever read. Moving and almost transgressive in its frankness, it is a relentlessly gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contem-porary urban life and survived it with a furious wit and unyielding determination. Cupcake Brown is a dynamic and utterly original storyteller who will guide you on the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you'll ever take. When it came time for me to talk, I wasn't sure which parts of my past to tell, which to keep secret, and which to pretend never happened. Uncle Jr. had already seen the welts on my back, so he wasn't too surprised when I told them about some of the physical abuse I endured at Diane's. Everyone else hit the roof, except Daddy. He got really quiet and started balling and unballing his fists. I continued my update. Experience had taught me that adults have trouble accepting the idea of children having sex. I decided that from then on, that part of my life never happened. I picked up the story by telling them about Fly, the Gangstas, and getting shot. I was dying for a cigarette. So it seemed a good time to announce that I smoked cigarettes and weed. After a moment Sam looked at me, smiled, and handed me one of her Marlboros. I preferred menthols, but beggars can't be choosers. I kicked back, took a long drag, and closed my eyes. Daddy and Jr. were silent. They seemed a bit shocked and unsure about how to respond. Well, Cup, Jr. said, it's a little too late to be trying to raise you now. But those cigarettes will kill you. And weed will only lead you to stronger drugs. He didn't know how right he was. But for me, it was too late to be worrying about stronger drugs the only worrying I did was whether I could find a connection to get some. So I just smiled, nodded, and took another hit off my cigarette. The eerie quiet returned. from A Piece of Cake Also available as a Random House AudioBook and eBook. From the Hardcover edition. A Piece of Cake: A Memoir Read Ar Books Online Free

[girderednerve]

tagged by @tomato-greens, thank you!

Last song: i am listening to charli xcx crash for the first time at this very moment. i think i am too much of a dull homebody for charli but this album is fun

before that it was "the man was burning" by jake blount

Last show: chainsaw man. i like the anime less than the manga which i didn't strictly expect, but it's still good!

Currently watching: dragon ball z for the first time! it's fun & it's also entertaining to be watching it for the first time while working in teen services in a public library. i keep getting razzed by teens for being clueless, which rules

Currently reading: a massive heap of fanfiction as always, plus i have the audiobook of keith wailoo's pushing cool, which is interesting—it's a history of the menthol cigarette & more broadly considers the role tobacco companies have played in communities of color

i stalled out around halfway through frykman's the bloody flag, which is a history of late eighteenth century mutinies; it's fascinating & i keep picking away at it without making much headway.

i have a huge list of books i would like to be reading but i am entering my last semester (hopefully!!) of grad school & applying around for librarian jobs, & my focus is just generally shot. i am trying to make peace with being a person who reads a little bit of a lot of things

Current obsession: aforementioned life circumstances/general sluggishness are really limiting me here. there are a few topics that i can become like, instantly rabid about & those are always in force—industrial dust disease, medieval romances, premodern money, intellectual property, &, conveniently, libraries.

lately i've been having fun messing around with calligraphy & trying to design a font using one of those turn-your-handwriting-into-a-font tools. also daydreaming about knitting a sweater vest.

i still have podfic aspirations too! i will happily take recommendations for those if anybody wants a recording of a fic or an academic article, but no promises & the timeline may be very long haha

if you see this & would like to answer these questions please feel personally invited to do so & tag me! i'd love to hear about what everybody's up to :)