November 2014 Host:  Sara

Orange is the New
Black by Piper Kerman

Summary

Piper Kerman carried drug money in Brussels in the early nineteen nineties and this catches up to her a decade later when someone names her for the crime.   The blonde-haired, blue-eyed, well-educated Piper must begin a fourteen month sentence in the women’s correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut.  She chronicles her prison experiences in this candid memoir.  Piper describes prison life in detail such as good prison guards versus bad, earning phone privileges, smuggling food in one’s underwear for cooking later, warding off sexual advances, and learning the plethora of protocols and rules to avoid trouble or having privileges revoked.  She eventually makes close friends on the inside, avidly reads the large assortment of books her family and friends send her, and runs six mile a day on the prison track to relieve her stress.   Piper touches on many subjects such as the incarceration of non-violent drug offenders (e.g. a Dominican woman in her seventies is serving four years for a wire charge which involved taking messages for a drug dealing relative) and restorative justice.  If you have watched the show, the book is a ‘safe’ read and not as graphic (e.g. no pregnancy drama, brutal beatings, overt sex, drug running, etc.)  This memoir is about women from different backgrounds bonding despite their terrible situation and we recommend it.

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