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Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison by [Piper Kerman]

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Piper Kerman

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

by Piper Kerman (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES

With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187–424—one of the millions of people who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system. From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and at times enraging, Kerman’s story offers a rare look into the lives of women in prison—why it is we lock so many away and what happens to them when they’re there.

Praise for Orange Is the New Black

“Fascinating . . . The true subject of this unforgettable book is female bonding and the ties that even bars can’t unbind.”—People (four stars)

“I loved this book. It’s a story rich with humor, pathos, and redemption. What I did not expect from this memoir was the affection, compassion, and even reverence that Piper Kerman demonstrates for all the women she encountered while she was locked away in jail. I will never forget it.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“This book is impossible to put down because [Kerman] could be you. Or your best friend. Or your daughter.”—Los Angeles Times

“Moving . . . transcends the memoir genre’s usual self-centeredness to explore how human beings can always surprise you.”—USA Today

“It’s a compelling awakening, and a harrowing one—both for the reader and for Kerman.”—Newsweek

Print length

322 pages
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English
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Random House
Publication date

April 6, 2010
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Kerman’s book is a fascinating look down the rabbit hole that is prison. . . . Unforgettable.”—People

“Orange transcends the memoir genre's usual self-centeredness to explore how human beings can always surprise you. You'd expect bad behavior in prison. But it's the moments of joy, friendship and kindness that the author experienced that make Orange so moving and lovely…You sense [Kerman] wrote Orange to make readers think not about her but her fellow inmates. And, boy, does she succeed.” —USA Today

"In Orange Is the New Black, Kerman puts us inside, from the first strip search...to the prison-issue unwashed underwear to the cucumbers and raw cauliflower that count as salad.... This book is impossible to put down because she could be you. Or your best friend. Or your daughter."—Los Angeles Times

"Kerman neither sentimentalizes nor lectures. She keeps the details of her despair to a minimum along with her discussion of the outrages of the penal system, concentrating instead on descriptions of her direct experiences, both harrowing and hilarious, and the personalities of the women who shared them with her." —Boston Globe

“Vivid, revealing.”—Entertainment Weekly

“[An] insightful and often very funny book.”—Salon

“In Orange Is the New Black, Kerman presents–devoid of self-pity, and with novelistic flair–life in the clink as less Caged Heat and more Steel Magnolias. —Vanity Fair

“I loved this book, to a depth and degree that caught me by surprise. What I did not expect from this memoir was the affection, compassion, and even reverence that Piper Kerman demonstrates for all the women she encountered while she was locked away in jail. That was the surprising twist: that behind the bars of women's prisons grow extraordinary friendships, ad hoc families, and delicate communities. In the end, this book is not just a tale of prisons, drugs, crime, or justice; it is, simply put, a beautifully told story about how incredible women can be, and I will never forget it.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“Don’t let the irreverent title mislead: This is a serious and bighearted book that depicts life in a women’s prison with great detail and—crucially—with empathy and respect for Piper Kerman’s fellow prisoners, most of whom did not and do not have her advantages and options. With its expert reporting and humane, clear-eyed storytelling, Orange Is the New Black will join Ted Conover’s Newjack among the necessary contemporary books about the American prison experience.” — Dave Eggers, author of Zeitoun and co-author of Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated

"I can't stop thinking about this marvelous book, about the generous and lovely women with whom Piper Kerman served her time. I never expected to pick up a memoir about prison and find myself immersed in a story of grace, of friendship, of loyalty and love. I have never read anything like this book, and I will read and reread it again and again."—Ayelet Waldman, author of Bad Mother and Daughter's Keeper

From Publishers Weekly

Relying on the kindness of strangers during her year's stint at the minimum security correctional facility in Danbury, Conn., Kerman, now a nonprofit communications executive, found that federal prison wasn't all that bad. In fact, she made good friends doing her time among the other women, many street-hardened drug users with little education and facing much longer sentences than Kerman's original 15 months. Convicted of drug smuggling and money laundering in 2003 for a scheme she got tangled up in 10 years earlier when she had just graduated from Smith College, Kerman, at 34, was a self-surrender at the prison: quickly she had to learn the endless rules, like frequent humiliating strip searches and head counts; navigate relationships with the other campers and unnerving guards; and concoct ways to fill the endless days by working as an electrician and running on the track. She was not a typical prisoner, as she was white, blue-eyed, and blonde (nicknamed the All-American Girl), well educated, and the lucky recipient of literature daily from her fiancé, Larry, and family and friends. Kerman's account radiates warmly from her skillful depiction of the personalities she befriended in prison, such as the Russian gangster's wife who ruled the kitchen; Pop, the Spanish mami; lovelorn lesbians like Crazy Eyes; and the aged pacifist, Sister Platte. Kerman's ordeal indeed proved life altering. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Piper Kerman is vice president of a Washington, D.C.–based communications firm that works with foundations and nonprofits. A graduate of Smith College, she lives in Brooklyn. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Just graduated from Smith College, Kerman made the mistake of getting involved with the wrong woman and agreeing to deliver a large cash payment for an international drug ring. Years later, the consequences catch up with her in the form of an indictment on conspiracy drug-smuggling and money-laundering charges. Kerman pleads guilty and is sentenced to 15 months in a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Entering prison in 2004—more than 10 years after her crime—Kerman finds herself submerged in the unique and sometimes overwhelming culture of prison, where kindness can come in the form of sharing toiletries, and an insult in the cafeteria can lead to an enduring enmity. Kerman quickly learns the rules—asking about the length of one’s prison stay is expected, but never ask about the crime that led to it—and carves a niche for herself even as she witnesses the way the prison system fails those who are condemned to it, many of them nonviolent drug offenders. An absorbing, meditative look at life behind bars. --Kristine Huntley --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Are You Gonna Go My Way?

International baggage claim in the Brussels airport was large and airy, with multiple carousels circling endlessly. I scurried from one to another, desperately trying to find my black suitcase. Because it was stuffed with drug money, I was more concerned than one might normally be about lost luggage.

I was twenty-three in 1993 and probably looked like just another anxious young professional woman. My Doc Martens had been jettisoned in favor of beautiful handmade black suede heels. I wore black silk pants and a beige jacket, a typical jeune fille, not a bit counterculture, unless you spotted the tattoo on my neck. I had done exactly as I had been instructed, checking my bag in Chicago through Paris, where I had to switch planes to take a short flight to Brussels.

When I arrived in Belgium, I looked for my black rollie at the baggage claim. It was nowhere to be seen. Fighting a rushing tide of panic, I asked in my mangled high school French what had become of my suitcase. “Bags don’t make it onto the right flight sometimes,” said the big lug working in baggage handling. “Wait for the next shuttle from Paris—it’s probably on that plane.”

Had my bag been detected? I knew that carrying more than $10,000 undeclared was illegal, let alone carrying it for a West African drug lord. Were the authorities closing in on me? Maybe I should try to get through customs and run? Or perhaps the bag really was just delayed, and I would be abandoning a large sum of money that belonged to someone who could probably have me killed with a simple phone call. I decided that the latter choice was slightly more terrifying. So I waited.

The next flight from Paris finally arrived. I sidled over to my new “friend” in baggage handling, who was sorting things out. It is hard to flirt when you’re frightened. I spotted the suitcase. “Mon bag!” I exclaimed in ecstasy, seizing the Tumi. I thanked him effusively, waving with giddy affection as I sailed through one of the unmanned doors into the terminal, where I spotted my friend Billy waiting for me. I had inadvertently skipped customs.

“I was worried. What happened?” Billy asked.

“Get me into a cab!” I hissed.

I didn’t breathe until we had pulled away from the airport and were halfway across Brussels.

My graduation processional at Smith College the year before was on a perfect New England spring day. In the sun-dappled quad, bagpipes whined and Texas governor Ann Richards exhorted my classmates and me to get out there and show the world what kind of women we were. My family was proud and beaming as I took my degree. My freshly separated parents were on their best behavior, my stately southern grandparents pleased to see their oldest grandchild wearing a mortarboard and surrounded by WASPs and ivy, my little brother bored out of his mind. My more organized and goal-oriented classmates set off for their graduate school programs or entry-level jobs at nonprofits, or they moved back home—not uncommon during the depths of the first Bush recession.

I, on the other hand, stayed on in Northampton, Massachusetts. I had majored in theater, much to the skepticism of my father and grandfather. I came from a family that prized education. We were a clan of doctors and lawyers and teachers, with the odd nurse, poet, or judge thrown into the mix. After four years of study I still felt like a dilettante, underqualified and unmotivated for a life in the theater, but neither did I have an alternate plan, for academic studies, a meaningful career, or the great default—law school.

I wasn’t lazy. I had always worked hard through my college jobs in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs, winning the affection of my bosses and coworkers via sweat, humor, and a willingness to work doubles. Those jobs and those people were more my speed than many of the people I had met at college. I was glad that I had chosen Smith, a college full of smart and dynamic women. But I was finished with what was required of me by birth and background. I had chafed within the safe confines of Smith, graduating by a narrow margin, and I longed to experience, experiment, investigate. It was time for me to live my own life.

I was a well-educated young lady from Boston with a thirst for bohemian counterculture and no clear plan. But I had no idea what to do with all my pent-up longing for adventure, or how to make my eagerness to take risks productive. No scientific or analytical bent was evident in my thinking—what I valued was artistry and effort and emotion. I got an apartment with a fellow theater grad and her nutty artist girlfriend, and a job waiting tables at a microbrewery. I bonded with fellow waitrons, bartenders, and musicians, all equally nubile and constantly clad in black. We worked, we threw parties, we went skinny-dipping or sledding, we fucked, sometimes we fell in love. We got tattoos.

I enjoyed everything Northampton and the surrounding Pioneer Valley had to offer. I ran for miles and miles on country lanes, learned how to carry a dozen pints of beer up steep stairs, indulged in numerous romantic peccadilloes with appetizing girls and boys, and journeyed to Provincetown for midweek beach excursions on my days off throughout the summer and fall.

When winter set in, I began to grow uneasy. My friends from school told me about their jobs and their lives in New York, Washington, and San Francisco, and I wondered what the hell I was doing. I knew I wasn’t going back to Boston. I loved my family, but the fallout of my parents’ divorce was something I wanted to avoid completely. In retrospect a EuroRail ticket or volunteering in Bangladesh would have been brilliant choices, but I stayed stuck in the Valley.
Among our loose social circle was a clique of impossibly stylish and cool lesbians in their mid-thirties. These worldly and sophisticated older women made me feel uncharacteristically shy, but when several of them moved in next door to my apartment, we became friends. Among them was a raspy-voiced midwesterner named Nora Jansen who had a mop of curly sandy-brown hair. Nora was short and looked a bit like a French bulldog, or maybe a white Eartha Kitt. Everything about her was droll—her drawling, wisecracking husky voice, the way she cocked her head to look at you with bright brown eyes from under her mop, even the way she held her ever-present cigarette, wrist flexed and ready for gesture. She had a playful, watchful way of drawing a person out, and when she paid you attention, it felt as if she were about to let you in on a private joke. Nora was the only one of that group of older women who paid any attention to me. It wasn’t exactly love at first sight, but in Northampton, to a twenty-two-year-old looking for adventure, she was a figure of intrigue.

And then, in the fall of 1992, she was gone.

She reappeared after Christmas. Now she rented a big apartment of her own, furnished with brand-new Arts and Crafts–style furniture and a killer stereo. Everyone else I knew was sitting on thrift store couches with their roommates, while she was throwing money around in a way that got attention.

Nora asked me out for a drink, just the two of us, which was a first. Was it a date? Perhaps it was, because she took me to the bar of the Hotel Northampton, the closest local approximation to a swank hotel lounge, painted pale green with white trelliswork everywhere. I nervously ordered a margarita with salt, at which Nora arched a brow.

“Sort of chilly for a marg?” she commented, as she asked for a scotch.

It was true, the January winds were making western Massachusetts uninviting. I should have ordered something dark in a smaller glass—my frosty margarita now seemed ridiculously juvenile.

“What’s that?” she asked, indicating the little metal box I had placed on the table.

The box was yellow and green and had originally held Sour Lemon pastilles. Napoleon gazed westward from its lid, identifiable by his cocked hat and gold epaulettes. The box had served as a wallet for a woman I’d known at Smith, an upperclasswoman who was the coolest person I had ever met. She had gone to art school, lived off campus, was wry and curious and kind and superhip, and one day when I had admired the box, she gave it to me. It was the perfect size for a pack of cigarettes, a license, and a twenty. When I tried to pull money out of my treasured tin wallet to pay for the round, Nora waved it away.

Where had she been for so many months? I asked, and Nora gave me an appraising once-over. She calmly explained to me that she had been brought into a drug-smuggling enterprise by a friend of her sister, who was “connected,” and that she had gone to Europe and been formally trained in the ways of the underworld by an American art dealer who was also “connected.” She had smuggled drugs into this country and been paid handsomely for her work.

I was completely floored. Why was Nora telling me this? What if I went to the police? I ordered another drink, half-certain that Nora was making the entire thing up and that this was the most harebrained seduction attempt ever.
I had met Nora’s younger sister once before, when she came to visit. She went by the name of Hester, was into the occult, and would leave a trail of charms and feathered trinkets made of chicken bones. I thought she was just a Wiccan heterosexual version of her sister, but apparently she was the lover of a West African drug kingpin. Nora described how she had traveled with Hester to Benin to meet the kingpin, who went by the name Alaji and bore a striking resemblance to MC Hammer. She had stayed as a guest at his compound, witnessed and been subject to “witch-doctor” ministrations, and was now considered his sister-in-law. It all sounded dark, awful, scary, wild—and exciting beyond belief. I couldn’t believe that she, the keeper of so many terrifying and tantalizing secrets, was taking me into her confidence.

It was as if by revealing her secrets to me, Nora had bound me to her, and a secretive courtship began. No one would call Nora a classic beauty, but she had wit and charm in excess and was a master at the art of seeming effortlessness. And as has always been true, I respond to people who come after me with clear determination. In her seduction of me, she was both persistent and patient.

Over the months that followed, we grew much closer, and I learned that a number of local guys I knew were secretly working for her, which proved reassuring to me. I was entranced by the illicit adventure Nora represented. When she was in Europe or Southeast Asia for a long period of time, I all but moved into her house, caring for her beloved black cats, Edith and Dum-Dum. She would call at odd hours of the night from the other side of the globe to see how the kitties were, and the phone line would click and hiss with the distance. I kept all this quiet—even as I was dodging questions from my already-curious friends.

Since business was conducted out of town, the reality of the drugs felt like a complete abstraction to me. I didn’t know anyone who used heroin; and the suffering of addiction was not something I thought about. One day in the spring Nora returned home with a brand-new white Miata convertible and a suitcase full of money. She dumped the cash on the bed and rolled around in it, naked and giggling. It was her biggest payout yet. Soon I was zipping around in that Miata, with Lenny Kravitz on the tape deck demanding to know, “Are You Gonna Go My Way?”

Despite (or perhaps because of) the bizarre romantic situation with Nora, I knew I needed to get out of Northampton
and do something. My friend Lisa B. and I had been saving our tips and decided that we would quit our jobs at the brewery and take off for San Francisco at the end of the summer. (Lisa knew nothing about Nora’s secret activities.) When I told Nora, she replied that she would love to have an apartment in San Francisco and suggested that we fly out there and house-hunt. I was shocked that she felt so strongly about me.

Just weeks before I was to leave Northampton, Nora learned that she had to return to Indonesia. “Why don’t you come with me, keep me company?” she suggested. “You don’t have to do anything, just hang out.”

I had never been out of the United States. Although I was supposed to begin my new life in California, the prospect was irresistible. I wanted an adventure, and Nora had one on offer. Nothing bad had ever happened to the guys from Northampton who had gone with her to exotic places as errand boys—in fact, they returned with high-flying stories that only a select group could even hear. I rationalized that there was no harm in keeping Nora company. She gave me money to purchase a ticket from San Francisco to Paris and said there would be a ticket to Bali waiting for me at the Garuda Air counter at Charles de Gaulle. It was that simple.

Nora’s cover for her illegal activities was that she and her partner in crime, a goateed guy named Jack, were starting an art and literary magazine—questionable, but it lent itself to vagueness. When I explained to my friends and family that I was moving to San Francisco and would be working and traveling for the magazine, they were uniformly surprised and suspicious of my new job, but I rebuffed their questions, adopting the air of a woman of mystery. As I drove out of Northampton headed west with my buddy Lisa, I felt as if I were finally embarking on my life. I felt ready for anything.

Lisa and I drove nonstop from Massachusetts to the Montana border, taking turns sleeping and driving. In the middle of the night we pulled into a rest stop to sleep, where we awoke to see the incredible golden eastern Montana dawn. I could not remember ever being so happy. After lingering in Big Sky country, we sped through Wyoming and Nevada until finally we sailed over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. I had a plane to catch. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0036S4B6M
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (April 6, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 6, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2919 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #124,175 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #6 in New England U.S. Biographies
- #9 in Penology (Kindle Store)
- #347 in Biographies & Memoirs of Women

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Piper Kerman

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Piper Eressea Kerman (born September 28, 1969) is an American memoirist convicted of felony money-laundering charges; her experiences in prison provided the basis for the comedy-drama Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Mark Schierbecker (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Kristin M. Pickford

Great Read!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 4, 2013

Verified Purchase

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!

6 people found this helpful

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Maria

Not What I Expected

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 20, 2023

Verified Purchase

I put off reading this book for a long time, mainly because I was afraid of a glorification of life in prison. I never watched the show so I had no idea if my thoughts would be founded; never even read the blurb on the back. I’m glad I finally picked it up. There is no glorification of crime and life in prison. Instead, it’s an honest look of a young woman who made a mistake (as almost all prison stories are) and how she finds her way within the system. I liked learning about how the day-to-day activities shaped her day and about the friendships she made. This opened my eyes to what it is like in a minimum-security prison. It won’t have the same effects as a Scared Straight show but it is enlightening.

Helpful

Rita Sydney

No (wo)man is an island

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 20, 2014

Verified Purchase

There are three levels of information in this powerful memoir. The skeleton of the book is the personal story of the author, who, 10 years after acting as a drug courier, goes to a Federal prison for 13 months. She details how she fell into criminal behavior and then, once imprisoned, describes the realities of life with severely limited opportunities for personal choice.

The reader follows the author as the mass of other inmates, a noisy crowd, become individuals with unique personalities. As she learns the group mores the author becomes accepted and valued for what she can contribute. Her job in the facility makes her sought out to repair broken things. Prison cheesecake becomes her speciality for parties.

Inadvertently, the book is a sociological study of the society these diverse individuals create among themselves.

"Some women organized themselves into...family relationships...especially mother-daughter pairs....The younger women relied on their 'moms' for advice, attention, food, commissary loans, affection, guidance, even discipline. If one of the young ones was misbehaving, she might get directed by another irritated prisoner, 'Go talk to your mama and work your s*** out.' Or if the kid was really out of control with her mouth or her radio...the mama might get the request, 'you need to talk to your daughter, 'cause if she don't get some act-right, I'ma knock her out.!'"

The author too becomes part of a family that "exemplified the complex ways that family trees grew behind bars, like topiaries trained into very odd shapes."

Being institutionalized doesn't impede taking advantages of reasons for celebration. The "will to protect and maintain our own humanity despite the prison system's....[ability]....to crush it" blossoms in all-consuming joyfulness on occasion.

There is a storm of emotion when the GED test results are announced and women who have tried and tried to pass it finally succeed. The author, "thought I was going to lose it and start crying right there, and I was not a crier. The release of so much collective happiness in that miserable place was almost too much for me. It was like hot and cold air colliding, creating a tornado right inside the hall."

The third strand that runs through this book is the picture of the prison system. Through the author's honest and compassionate telling of her own and other prisoners' stories the cruelties, stupidities, and indifference of the American penal system are laid bare.

The cruelties:
-- A Dominican woman in her 70's, with little English, serving 4 years "for taking phone messages for her drug-dealing male relative."
-- A 69 year old nun serving a long sentence for nonviolent protest at a missile silo in Colorado.
-- The author herself, after conviction, had to wait to begin serving her sentence until the legal issue of someone else was resolved; she was in this limbo for 5 years!!!

Blind vengeance propels the war on drugs as it sweeps up groups of people on "conspiracy charges" so that many of the author's fellow prisoners were serving long sentences based on the total amount of drugs in an operation and not their individual non-violent small role.

The stupidity:
The "correctional" system doesn't want to fix anything. It's about "revenge and retribution" rather than "restorative justice." Justice for the author, and many others, would have been better served had she been doing community service rather than corralled into a warehouse.

The indifference:
The author has the insight that no one really ran the prison system. Everyone in correction work just did their job without examining the purpose of the system. Punishment was dealt with in an "offhand and indifferent" manner with the expectation that somehow "confinement alone will create the incentive and the means for an individual to make a change in their life."

Thus, aside from Puppies Behind Bars (raising dogs for service work) there's no real program to learn anything during the months and years in prison.

Thus, the "Pre-Release Program" is like a Saturday Night Live parody.

--To get women ready for release, attendees are pep talked about eating and exercise and "treating your body as a temple" but not a word of where and how to get medical services once released or options for dealing with the temptation to resume old addictions.

--The former warden's secretary offers a talk on Positive Attitude that consists of her struggle to diet.

-- "Housing" is addressed by a man who talks about insulation and siding and choosing a roof. When one of the women asks, "...can you talk a little about how to get an apartment, or if there are any programs we can qualify for...someone told me I should go to a homeless shelter..." he advises her to use the newspaper or a website.

The author fell into the drug trade as an adventure seeker, a go-it-alone stoic. In prison she discovers "the vilest thing" about herself "was an indifference to the suffering of others." She also learns that she "was in fact good...more than capable of helping other people...eager to offer what I had, which was more than I had realized...Best of all I had found other women...who could teach me how to be better."

The author had total support from her family and scores of friends during her time in prison, and a good job waiting for her upon release. Most of the other women in prison are not as fortunate.

When the door of the prison is opened to "freedom" the woman released is usually no better prepared to deal with health, employment, housing, and family than before she was jailed. Her life of "freedom" will be, as always, catch as catch can.

Little wonder that in America "there is basically a revolving door between our urban and rural ghettos and the formal ghetto of our prison system."

Warning to readers: prepare for tears; prepare for outrage.

38 people found this helpful

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Gursewak Singh Sidhu

Good book to read ..

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on June 18, 2022

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A book that makes you wonder of who is sane? American justice system is so screwed up. White collar crimes - people who steal millions can get away with fines and no jail time just because they have good lawyers, and on other hand poor people get sent to jails for just 10grams of drugs. America and countries in general, really need to get their justice system together.

José Ramos

Recomendo

Reviewed in Brazil 🇧🇷 on September 12, 2019

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

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The Mexican Shopper

Very thoughtful and sincere memoir of a woman's time in a US federal prison

Reviewed in Mexico 🇲🇽 on February 27, 2018

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Please read the book before you watch the TV series! Ms. Kerman's experience in prison, in reality, is completely different than what is depicted in the TV series. Having said that, I did enjoy watching the entire TV series. But, please, read the book.

One person found this helpful

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TOM

おもしろいだけじゃなくて、テーマが深い

Reviewed in Japan 🇯🇵 on August 16, 2018

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Netflixのドラマがとても気に入ったので、読んでみた。
原作はドラマとかなり違うが、ドラマには無い深いテーマがあった。

ざっくりテーマは３つあったように感じる。
人は助け合って生きてるってこと、アメリカが抱える格差とドラッグの問題、そして刑務所のシステムの問題だ。
この３つのテーマはそれぞれ深いところで関連し合っており、その構造を刑務所に入ることでパイパーは体験したのである。
とてもよくまとまっていて説得力があり、しっかり胸に刻まれるものがあった。

それから、この原作を読んで、改めてドラマ版のすごさを知った。
ドラマは原作のいろんな要素をあちこちつまんで使っているのだが、どれもタダでは使っていない。
どのエピソードも３倍はおもしろくして使っている。
この原作のストーリーへの組み込み方、ちょっと尋常じゃないパワフルな創造性を感じた。
ドラマ版のおもしろさを再認識する意味でも有意義な本だといえる。

文章とか観察力とか、テクニックの部分は素人臭くてあまり好きじゃなかったが、しかし内容はとても素晴らしく、読んでよかったと思える、いい本だった。

5 people found this helpful

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Lorena

Muy buen libro

Reviewed in Mexico 🇲🇽 on April 10, 2019

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Aún estoy leyendo el libro, la historia es muy interesante, esta edición está en inglés, comencé viendo la serie y ahora no puedo dejar de leer, vale la pena el producto.

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