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

Read online Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison book now. You also can download other books, magazine and also comics. Get online Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison today.  

 

 

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

Paperback: 327 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (March 8, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0385523394
ISBN-13: 978-0385523394
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces

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.

 

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

I really liked this book. It is written like a series of sequential articles rather than a narrative with true character development, but it still provides interesting insights into the rhythm of institutional prison life, with its mind-numbing bureaucracy and its mash-up of humanity trying to adapt or deal with incarceration. It is told from Kerman's pov, and thus her reactions to life in prison make up the bulk of the book, but she still provides a lot of food for thought about our prisons and the people who live in them.

I came to the book through the Netflix mini-series, and the only reason I watched that was because of Kate Mulgrew who is "Red", but I found myself completely drawn in by the series story line and the lives of the characters in the movie, in spite of the fact the show was much, MUCH more shockingly graphic than anything I typically enjoy (used tampon sandwich for starters). After the mind-blowing ending of the first season of the mini-series, I had to read the book to see whether something like that incident really happened. The answer is thankfully no. There are no deaths in this book, no overt sex, no pregnancy drama, no drug-running drama, no brutal attacks, and so on.

It is difficult for many people to have compassion for people who are in prison or to care about their living conditions since they "made their bed", but I think books that remind us of our common humanity with "others" are important and worth reading, and so I added a star to the book's rating.

Recommended. And if you are put off by the graphic nature of the mini-series, this book is a "safe" read. If you are hoping to read graphic descriptions of events portrayed in the mini-series, you will be disappointed.