Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison
When Orange is the New Black made its Netflix debut in 2013, audiences said hell yes. The show has the dramatic draw of lesbianism, violence, infidelity, and drugs, all with a comedic twist. Of course, behind every great film/television show, there’s usually a great book—and this one is no exception. It helps that my favorite character from the show happens to enjoy literature as much as I do:
In 2010, Piper Kerman published her memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, which details her imprisonment in 2005. Like most of my peers, I have a problem with the criminal justice system…but I do virtually nothing to help change its trajectory because I’m not personally affected by it. It disgusts me that the U.S. comprises only 5% of the world’s population, yet we house 25% of the world’s prisoners. It disgusts me that the so-called “War on Drugs” has quadrupled the number of incarcerations since 1980 without effectively addressing the root problem. It disgusts me that the current system disproportionally affects African Americans and screws over people in poverty. Here’s a colorful info-graphic to check out if you don’t already share my disgust: Colorful Info-Graphic.
I appreciate that Piper recognized these appalling trends and used her circumstances to speak out against them. Unlike her fellow prisoners, Piper was extraordinarily lucky to have a heavily involved support system with financial means and upstanding legal counsel. During her incarceration, a friend started the website www.thepipebomb.com to help coordinate visits, encourage letters/packages, and express solidarity against the system. Additionally, her friend who owned a start-up company created a marketing position specifically for her upon her release. In the camp, Piper saw that most prisoners had very different experiences.
Although prison is undoubtedly a horrific experience, Piper seemed to make the most of it and flourish within the walls. For instance, she ended up getting a bangin bod by running 30 miles a week at roughly a 7-minute pace. On the weekend of the New York City marathon, she casually ran her own half marathon on the prison tracks. Clearly, the only thing stopping me from performing like an Olympic athlete is my own freedom.
Not only was her physique transformed, but her psyche was as well. She discovered her own kind of restorative justice, “in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right to the people they have harmed” (Kerman, 180). Prison sucked, but it made her a better person by forcing her to confront her missteps.
And now… what we’re all waiting for…how is the show different from the book? Piper Kerman was a beloved inmate who learned from prison but was not hardened or crushed by it. Piper Chapman—the show’s version of Pipes—is a narcissistic bitch IMO. The memoir provides the bare-minimum backbone for the story: an unsuspecting middle-class white woman gets thrown into jail and interacts with people of different backgrounds from her. The show heavily extrapolates on that framework, focusing on the eccentricities of each character and (in later seasons) minimizing Piper’s involvement in favor of focusing on, frankly, more interesting people.
The biggest discrepancy is her ex-girlfriend’s involvement. The show’s juiciest drama revolves around Piper having to share prison space with “Alex”, her long-gone ex who got her into this whole criminal mess in the first place. This nugget is not factual; in her memoir, Piper Kerman explains that she spent only a short time in the same transition-camp as her ex because they were co-defenders traveling to a trial for one of the drug kingpins they had both worked under. This interaction was unpleasant, but it was not the crux of Piper’s experience in jail.
The show aside, I give the book 4 out of 5 flames. I love how Piper explains how the system continuously fails AND presents an entertaining story about something most of us will (hopefully) never experience. At the same time, it isn’t the most impressive writing I’ve ever read, and I was often confused by her vague transitions—it seemed that her stories weren’t as fluid as she had expected and she’d jump from one topic to another too abruptly. Overall, I recommend this for readers who want perspective on a pressing domestic issue through the lens of comedy and relative lightheartedness.
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