Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison

I had in the last month subscribed to Netflix, and in doing so, I had heard a lot of the hype about the new original series called Orange is the New Black. I watched the 13 episodes in a matter of a couple of days. I have to say I absolutely loved the show. I looked forward to sitting with my new Kindle and watching each new episode. It was really sad to have it come to an end so quickly because I really had enjoyed it so much. I happened to be listening to NPR one day and heard the show Fresh Air with Terri Gross. Her guest that day happened to be Piper Kerman. She is the woman who wrote this memoir of her year in a Women's Prison. I became even more intrigued with the differences that she was telling Terri about from the book to the show on Netflix. I then decided that I really wanted to hear the real story and see what it was like. I didn't hesitate to go right to Amazon.com and pick up a copy of the new paperback book Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by Piper Kerman. I am very happy that I decided to get the book written by the person who actually lived the story. I will say that Netflix did an excellent job in creating a very good show that really did a super job in mixing in enough things that were for the entertainment factor of the show. It really didn't go overboard too much but just had the right mix in adding things that made the show seem like the story was really in line with Hollywood and at the same time maintaining enough parts of the truth to the real story that the book tells by the author. I am still reading it, but am going to be finishing it within the next two days and I am loving it as much as I loved watching each new show that came out. I really am hoping that Netflix will pick up the series for a second season just because it is a really different and fun show to watch. I would absolutely recommend this book as well as the Netflix original series to anyone. Piper is a very likable character in the show, and person in true life as she tells her story no holds barred. It is very interesting reading about all the wonderful women that she crossed paths with in of all places a prison. There is a lot of flat out honesty that she just tells her story with. It makes you really like her and most of the women that she became close friends with while she was in the Danbury Women's Prison of all places. It isn't like she had a great time being in prison but the way that she tells her story is very much like what I would think it would feel like if it was me who was in her place. All of the new experiences that she confronts and all the kind women who really helped her in the first few weeks of actually getting used to being in prison and the rules that she has to learn and the way that the "old timers" really did a great job in helping her in those first most terrifying early days when she got there really is very touching and extremely entertaining. I can imagine that she must have stayed in touch with some of the women who were going to be there long after she did her year, so that when it was time for mail every day, some of those incredibly kind and important women that Piper did get to know well are rewarded in getting letters from her I have to believe from time to time. Like I mentioned earlier, I would recommend this book to really anyone who enjoys reading about true life and just likes to read a good book every now and then. It really has been great to pick up at any time and plowing through a couple of chapters in one sitting. I am approaching the end of the book so I will miss it, but I have to say it is very touching and honest and entertaining. And not in the way that you would get any kind of pleasure out of someone else's unfortunate story. It is extremely hard to put down and every time I pick it up, I imagine finishing it. But I honestly like to delay the ending because it is such a great book. I think that it would be a very difficult book not to like for just about anyone. I say go ahead and grab it for the few $$ that it costs as you get your money back in the honest true story that must have been very hard for Piper to write and remember that year she spent in Danbury when she actually sat down to write the book. I have a younger sister who held the job of a Prison Guard, and I don't understand why she became entwined with that work because I have a hard time picturing the sister that I grew up with doing that kind of unpleasant work. She has since gone into the ARMY for a 5 year stay and has been out for about 8 years now and she is working as a cop in a large city. Something that wasn't expected of anyone in our family where members would pass down the badge of courage, because we didn't come from that type of a family who enjoys doing that, passing the baton on to the next member. It was just something that she ended up in as a line of work. I think mostly because of the power that she must feel when she puts on her uniform and gets into her cruiser everyday for work. She has turned into someone who I haven't known as an adult since she came back from Afghanistan and it has been hard to come to terms with the type of person that she has turned into. To know how she has become a very different person than the girl that I grew up with is extremely hard to deal with because I had never pictured her becoming the type of person that she has truly become. I think that it bothers me because I try to figure out what it was that turned her in the direction that she took because we had the same upper middle class life growing up with two parents who truly loved us and that she could come from such a "normal" family and choose to mix with the dark side of prison, then being in the ARMY, and now being a cop. But that is a whole other story itself. I just want to say that I am truly enjoying this book and would definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking for something that is a fast and easy book to read! Happy reading if you decide to get it. I hope that this review will help you lean towards buying it! Enjoy!

Prison fascinates and horrifies me. My favorite TV show is Prison Break, so I thought I'd give Orange is the New Black show a try. While the TV show wasn't for me, I'm glad I read this memoir about an upper-middle-class woman who goes to prison for a year. I had the pleasure of meeting the author at a book reading/signing at a women's prison, and she is lovely in real life. Piper Kerman's real-life story chronicling her year in prison is insightful and thought-provoking. At times the writing impressed me, like this vivid description: "Miss Sanchez had long Frito-chip fingernails painted Barbie pink." There are interesting insights into prison life. "Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the word, a place where the US government not puts not only the dangerous but also the inconvenient--people who are mentally ill, people who are addicts, people who are poor and uneducated and unskilled. Meanwhile, the ghetto in the outside world is a prison as well, and a much more difficult one to escape from. In fact, there is basically a revolving door between our urban and rural ghettos and the formal ghetto of our prison system." My favorite "character" is the Russian wife of a mobster, Pop. Pop is the head cook, and gives invaluable advice to Piper. This story makes the reader inevitably wonder how she would handle imprisonment. I resonated with Piper helping an inmate write a paper. I also would try to fit exercise into my daily routine to stay sane. But really, it's hard to imagine how awful imprisonment would be. The groping from male guards infuriated me: "Other male COs were brazen, like the short, red-faced young bigmouth who asked me loudly and repeatedly, "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" while he fondled me and I gritted my teeth. There was absolutely no payoff for filing a complaint. A female prisoner who alleges sexual misconduct on the part of a guard is invariably locked in the SHU in "protective custody", losing her housing assignment, program actives, work assignment, and a host of other prison privileges, not to mention the comfort of her routine and friends." I like how prison statistics (like one out of 100 adults are locked up in the US) are told factually without a preachy tone. I'm also glad Piper mentioned feeling remorse for trafficking drugs--the very drugs that may have been used by her fellow inmates as part of their crimes. I can get behind the decriminalization of drugs for personal use, but I disagree with the notion that drug dealers are never violent. Overall, a good read, and I'm impressed Piper is giving back by teaching writing to prisoners.

minor spoilers Five stars as this was one of those rare books I found hard to put down. That's quite an achievement on the author's part as I find Jane Austen novels tedious, and would have thought to have been terminally bored by a book that's mostly about relationships within a group of women. It's easy to find accounts of torture and murder of inmates by the State in horrific United States prisons - just check out Amnesty International's website. I'm sure you can also find lurid tales of sex starved female prisoners in shady corners of the internet. Piper's account, however, is of neither. She endures a relatively brief stay in a place that's probably benign by US standards. She only experiences some of the true brutality of the United States prison system mercifully close to her release date, and although she does refer sparingly to prison sex, her only sexual experiences are when she is groped by some of the male guards. Understandably nervous at first, she soon finds friends among her fellow inmates, who are not the psychopaths that she might have feared. The book's main theme is the triumph of decent humanity over adversity, as the prisoners create some sort of life for themselves with virtually no resources. A yoga class is formed, Piper logs more miles each day on a running track than most free people ever manage, and numerous petty rules are broken as the inmates devise ways to whip up more interesting meals. Elaborate decorations are fashioned from practically nothing for Christmas and Halloween. Most of the prisoners seem to be far worthier people than their jailers. A secondary theme is the prison administration's total indifference to the welfare of its charges. Little if any intellectual stimulation is provided, and the guards range from OK but lazy to nasty but not vicious. This neglect was sometimes amusing. In one of a series of useless talks supposedly designed to prepare inmates due for release for life outside, the lecture on housing was delivered by a nice but hapless man who discussed aluminium cladding and the best kind of roof for a house. Well, I suppose that was his area of expertise. Piper seems to be remarkably unembittered from an experience that would have left me seething with rage. The only time she is really upset is when the State forbids her visiting her dying grandmother, but she doesn't seem to hold much of a grudge even for that. She's fortunate not to have any children, but describes the trauma inflicted on young children of prisoners who are deprived of their mother's care. It's true that things were far easier for Piper than for the other prisoners. She only had to serve a relatively short sentence, had books and magazines showered on her by many wonderfully supportive friends, and had a new apartment to share with her future husband to look forward to on release. This only goes to show, however, just how bad things were for just about everyone else, most of who would almost certainly have fallen foul of the insane drug laws of the United States rather than committing any real crime. I know that I should be far more angry about Amnesty International's reports on US prisons, but those things are so far beyond everyday experience that they're hard to imagine. By its very ordinary nature, Piper's account is far easier to experience vicariously. A top book by a talented writer

First, let me just preface this review by stating that I only found out about this book because of the Netflix series, and was interested in finding out how true to the book the show actually is. SPOILER ALERT - the show is much more dramatic that the memoir, which is why the book was a let-down for me. Overall, the book is a smooth read, a lot of characters to keep track of, but I believe to be an accurate reflection of how life in a women's prison was for Piper Kerman. Second, I really enjoyed Piper's writing style and her own perception of her time in prison. I actually really enjoyed how much her time in prison really made her appreciate her upbringing, as well as all the advantages she had in life AND in prison because of her never ending support system. I thought that her accounts of her feelings of fear, restlessness, and uncertainty were believable. I think that this book is important to highlight the difference between the prisons we see on TV shows, prisons we only hear about, and how prisons are in real life. Especially important is how this minimum security women's prison is so different than the "rapey" prisons we immediately think about for seriously hardened criminals. Lastly, I think before you pick up this book, you should NOT watch the Netflix series until AFTER you read the book, a big misstep in my process and the ultimate reason I was disappointed in the book. I wanted more drama, I wanted more conflict, and I wanted Piper to feel like she learned a lesson. I really felt like throughout the entire memoir that she was ultimately pissed because she got caught. Being pissed off for breaking the law AND getting caught is a validated reason to be upset. Piper did reap the benefits of dating a drug lord - exotic and frequent trips around the world, new cultural experiences, and having just about anything she wanted. Putting that life of crime behind you is one thing, but I just really never got the feeling that she was "sorry" for breaking the law. Maybe she isn't. I think I just wanted to feel, as a reader, that she learned her lesson or felt something more than "why is this happening to me?" I got increasingly annoyed from the repeated quotes of "what are you doing here" just because she was white, pretty, financially stable, and college educated. That being said, I think that prison was an unfortunate place for Piper to have such a reality check about her past life decisions, but I think she really grew as a person during her time there, and that she made her time in prison work for her. She learned new skills, was forced to interact with people she probably would never have chosen to interact with (based on how she described her life, I made that assumption), and really came to value the people in her life on a new level.

Piper Kerman was a college-educated, successful professional when a ten-year-old charge of money-laundering related to a drug smuggling ring came back to haunt her. She was sentenced to 15 months in a federal prison, of which she served 13 before being released for good behavior. Danbury Federal Correctional Institute in Connecticut is a minimum-security facility for women, so it wasn't really all that bad. Piper didn't experience any of the horrors we hear about, such as beatings, rape, etc. In fact, except for not being allowed to leave, it was almost like living in a dorm under unusually poor conditions: bad food, the "room" was a cubicle with only a partial wall, the bathroom wasn't clean and rarely had hot water, inspections were frequent, and there was no real privacy. However, Piper experienced what conditions were like in other prisons when she was flown to another state to testify as a witness in the trial of a co-defendant. Martha Stewart was an interesting sub-theme in this book. She was a frequent topic of conversation among the prisoners, as she had requested to be incarcerated at Danbury. The prison didn't want the media attention that would come with a celebrity inmate, so they closed the prison to new inmates. This meant that the prison emptied out significantly (due to the constant outflow of inmates who had completed their sentences) and it temporarily become "luxuriously" quiet and uncrowded. Since this is a low-security facility, the prisoners were in for mostly non-violent, often white-collar crimes, which made for a far wider range of types that you'd normally expect to find in jail. The inmate population encompassed all the races and included stockbrokers, elderly women, a nun (in for her peace activism), and a male-to-female transsexual. Piper made some close friends there, and her descriptions of her fellow prisoners are one of the highlights of the book. This book makes it easy to understand why so many convicts become institutionalized and return again and again for new crimes, especially in a relatively comfortable facility such as Danbury. Some of the inmates faced much worse conditions once they were released, and dreaded it. In jail, they were guaranteed a roof over their heads, a bed, a job, the company of friends, and three meals a day. Once out, they would be homeless, jobless, and broke. Some had no one on the outside, especially those who were in for long terms. Kerman has a real gift for observation, and it is the details that make this book so interesting. The reader can imagine everything so clearly, it is almost like being there. She is honest about her flaws and her crime, and seems sincerely repentant. In prison, for the first time in her life, she saw first-hand the effects of the kinds of drugs that her co-defendants smuggled. (298 pages)

I've read two books this month that really opened my eyes on the impact of the drug trade on the USA. The first was Orange is the New Black. Written by a Smithie who graduated shortly before I arrived there, the book is the memoir of a woman who gets mixed up with international drug smuggling after graduation, then goes straight and goes on to the life you'd expect from a Smith graduate. Then, many years after the incidents involved, the Feds show up and take her to prison. She spends a year and a half in "Club Fed", which isn't as fancy as people have made it sound. That said, she has some experiences with the bureau of prisons that make her realize that "the camp" was a paradise in comparison. At any rate, she herself had her eyes opened to the effects the drug trade had on others, the toll it takes on our society. The majority of the women she is locked up with are minor drug offenders, some of whom are serving long sentences due to sentencing minimums, many of whom are mothers of young children. She writes about how the prison system does very little to rehabilitate or prepare these women for a life outside. Instead, it breaks them down and institutionalizes them, so that they can only handle life behind bars - and then unceremoniously dumps them out on the street with 30 dollars in their pocket and the address of a homeless shelter. She notes that she is treated better at times because of her blond hair, and highlights the racism among the prison staff. However, much of the memoir is funny and uplifting, about the great friends she makes among the other prisoners. Although you'd imagine that as an upper-middle-class, well-educated white woman, she might find it hard to fit in in prison - but she has just the right personality to make it. She is street smart enough that she doesn't come off as snooty, and while she has some of the same fears and thoughts as I would have, she handles herself so well that she becomes quite popular in the prison system. And the other prisoners aren't the hardened cons that you see on Oz - they actually make her feel welcome and it's a great community of women like any other. At any rate, the memoir really shows how the author changed her perspective on life and makes it sound as if, although unfortunate, her experiences being locked up in Danbury gave her some lifelong memories and friends that are _almost_ but not quite worth the experience. I'm glad I'll never be in prison, but I found this book absolutely fascinating and read it straight through in a few days even though I wanted to save it for an upcoming plane trip. After all, the author and I have a lot in common. I am so glad I decided to get a job in technology after graduation, lucky as I was to be graduating into the first Internet bubble. It was fun to be able to place the author's locations, like Northampton Massachusetts. I've even stayed in the Congress Hotel in Chicago (yup, it IS a dump). And of course I remember when the Martha Stewart trial was ongoing. The songs she mentions, and the current events, will make this book something of a time capsule.

To counter some of the other reviews, the author doesn't come off to me as entitled or as attempting to portray anything other than her own experience. I do believe the book's inner flap summary sounds that way but in the actual text of the book, the author does not. She is actually very honest about taking responsibility for her actions and about expressing the emotions she experiences as she travels through different aspects of the federal justice system. It's her perspective because that's all she can write about since that's all we really know well enough to accurately portray (unlike a non-biographical account, this has a realism to it that makes reading it very smooth). It's a very interesting story, almost an ideal mix of factual portrayals of her surroundings and interactions with her personal journey as she moves through this universe. I will agree that I found the beginning a bit dull but once she launches into the actual story behind her conviction, it becomes much more interesting. It looks more like bad editing than bad writing - on that note, there were a couple of sentences that were poorly drafted, but it isn't something a normal person would get stuck on. To be clear, this isn't a story about what it's like to survive in a really severe prison environment - but that's part of what makes this interesting and a little easier to relate to and comprehend. It's not a how-to book as to prison survival, it's not a whiny complaining, attack the system, book. Yes, there is some "attack the system" in there, but it's exactly correct and appropriate. It's a book about what a minimum security prison for women was like for this one woman, who didn't really fit the standard profile for a federal prison inmate, how she reacted to and resolved her issues with that, and how those she interacted with resolved their issues with her in this context. I read it almost in a single seating (I went to sleep and finished it up the next morning) because it is both such an easy and such a compelling read. I would not recommend the book to anyone who feels that people involved with drug crimes or who end up in prison are terrible awful useless people as they will likely be outraged at the honest portrayal of humanity. For the rest of use mature enough to think outside the box, this is worth a read.

Orange is the New Black is the memoir by Piper Kerman detailing the year she spent in a women’s prison. The drug related offences date from 10 years prior to her incarceration and in the meantime, Kerman had built a life for herself with a rewarding job and supportive fiancé. The book has also been adapted into a successful Netflix Original television show, of which I have seen season one, and plan to binge watch season two in the very near future. It should be noted that the TV series and the book, while both excellent, are very different beasts. There is a lot of dramatisation in the TV show not present in the book, which, on the other hand, gives a very thoughtful, measured introspective into Kerman’s emotional journey during her incarceration. I listened to the audiobook during my coach trip from Montreal to Toronto - a trip of about eight hours - and not only did it hold my attention through the trip, but I wanted to continue listening when I got home. What I liked The narration. Cassandra Campbell does an amazing job of providing the voiceover for Kerman’s emotional journey as well as creating distinct voices for each of the people Kerman meets during her stay. You could easily tell who was talking by the voices. Kerman’s emotional journey. I really liked the way Kerman took responsibility for her actions that led to her indictment and imprisonment. She made no excuses for her actions. This was especially apparent when she was recounting her interactions with fellow inmates whose challenges included drug addiction. It came across clearly that she was finally making the connection between her own actions and their consequences for those dependent on drugs. Voyeurism. I admit to definite feelings of voyeurism reading this book. I have never spent time in prison, and I hope never to do so, so it was fascinating to read about the details of day-to-day life in prison. What I didn’t like Abrupt ending. I felt the ending was rather abrupt - it ends literally as Kerman walks out of prison after having served her time. I would have welcomed a chapter or two narrating how she adapted back to life as a free woman. I would heartily recommend Orange is the New Black, both the book and TV series. I gave the audiobook four and a half stars out of five.

I read about a book a week, and this was one of my top 5 from last year. Aside from being an extremely easy read, which is not necessarily always a positive, this book packs a message that is important to hear - whether the reader agrees with the author or not. It is full of discussion points on the American penal system and treats all of its characters with respect, which is hard to find. After reading the book, I enjoyed talking with friends about its various facets. This book is rare in such regards. The only real downside to the book is that it is sometimes a little too preachy. Some things should not need to be said directly, but that is really a question of taste. I would recommend it as a gift for people of any political persuasion, because it enables readers to reconsider how we live and challenges some to see others as people.

This book is just so special for me...

Muy buen libro para conocer la verdadera historia de la serie de Netflix. La trama del libro es completamente diferente a la de la serie.

The book for me was a surprising read; I thought that the book would be a story with a definite plot that weaved through creating anticipation to a final climax, (this was mostly due to it being made into a television show!) I was completely wrong and if I’m honest I’m glad I was. The book is a better book than I could have expected with no added drama and no over the top embellishments. It is an account of the correctional system from an insider’s perspective detailing the difficulties, the stories and the dreams of the prisoners that Kerman finds herself in the company of. Through the book we learn of Kerman’s treacherous past after getting involved in the drugs trade through a girlfriend. This comes back to haunt her and Piper is convicted and sentenced. After ten years, she is finally sent to the correctional facility in Danbury where she is met with a host of lively and understanding convicts. Among the bunch is the Piper’s bunkie, the quiet and serious Natalie that keeps their cube spotless, Little Janet the endearing friend that Piper grows extremely close to and Pop, a mothering figure that after a couple of months takes Piper under her wing. Down for a number of sentences (although all are for minor crimes for fraud or drug smuggling rather than violence) Piper learns from them and many others how to deal with the difficult situation she is in and learns the system of how to get by in this new world. The main strength in the book is found in the little anecdotes or sketches of the ways that the prisoners get through their sentences by stretching the rules. These include a number of things such as decorations on birthdays, movie nights and pedicures. Piper describes the strong rivalry between two of the woman that have their own pedicure ‘salons’ in their cubes and the way in which each of the prisoners is equally viciously loyal. She also describes the contraband food; with a tiny microwave the prisoners would raid food from the dining hall to use for cooking projects such as corn chips made into mash by adding water and chilaquiles a prison delicacy. By the end of the book Piper is excellent at creating the contraband prison pudding, cheesecake. Additionally stories include the way in which prisoners offer to make the newbie’s beds and how many of the prisoners crochet different products with skill and dexterity. The book is full of titbits of life in the prison and the way in which the ladies find pleasure in the smallest of effects in which to get by. The characters are well described and each has a story to tell. The book weaves between each of them giving them a way of talking and telling their story and shows us how each of them enables Piper to grow and find herself in such a destructive and all-consuming setting. I don’t want to give too much away so read the book! Many have argued in reviews that the book is superficial and false; many argue that although Piper maintains through the book that she was innocent she must have known what she was doing when she was committing the crime. However, to me, through the book Piper acknowledges that through her crimes she has ultimately been providing the drugs trade that has put so many of her fellow prisoners and friends behind bars for so many years. I thought that through the book Piper begins to fully understand the extent her crime has affected not only her, but also the addicts around her, and by the end she is fully able to repent and feel humble that she has paid her price. Additionally I felt the strength in the book came in Piper’s strength; she did not whine or complain but took her punishment with understanding and tried to fit in accordingly. Additionally, some have complained that it seems odd that her family and noticeably Larry’s family (her fiancé) adjusted so easily to her being in prison and came to visit her often. I would argue that unless we have been in her exact situation then it is difficult to comment fairly. None of us know the way in which our family or our partner’s family would react in such a situation; I know that if it were me I would want the constant support that Kerman has and this book only shows the importance of family and support to prisoners when in prison. Additionally Kerman uses the book as a way of describing the problems in prisons mostly to do with the lack of support for the prisoners that have boyfriends or partners in jail, and prisoners that try and re-enter society after their sentence. In the acknowledgements it discusses the work that Kerman is now doing to help female prisoners to gain jobs and housing after finishing their sentence, which is excellent. Kerman states throughout the book that she was one of the lucky ones, with good support and somewhere to go after prison. Many do not get that chance. This book is a brilliant compilation of wit, humour, defeat, and hope. I hope that Kerman realises her dream of helping these women in the future and continues to make a positive effect on the rehabilitation of such prisoners.

Muito bom.ç e chegou bem antes do previsto. Entrega rápida mesmo.