Orange is the New Black, by Piper Kerman

Piper Kerman. Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2011. 327 pages. ISBN 9780385523394.

Orange is the New Black: A Netflix Original Series.

I came to read this book after I watched the first two seasons of the Netflix television show based on this memoir by Piper Kerman. I had seen the book advertised everywhere (it was really hard to miss), but only watched Orange is the New Black when my husband and I finished Breaking Bad, and we were looking for something that we could watch together. I was hooked on the TV show after the first episode. I found the whole premise of the show to be fascinating. Years after committing a crime, Piper is indicted. By pleading guilty she gets a reduced sentence of 15 months, but it takes years to get to that point so after living with prison hanging over her head for many years, she finally has to turn herself in voluntarily for her sentence. Piper is assigned to a federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, a minimum security prison in which inmates aren't housed in cells, but in dorms.

Upon watching the show I immediately began to get caught up in drama related to the different inmates and their conflicts, as well as the conditions within the prison and the manner in which the guards and other correctional officers treat the inmates. Over the course of two seasons (13 episodes each, which we watched over the course of about 3-4 weeks), there are beatings, a drug overdose, romances between guards and inmates, lots of lesbian sex, and punishments doled out (such as being sent to solitary confinement). In spite of all this there is a lot of humor in the show, but it's the drama that keeps the viewer coming back.

After watching the first two seasons, and with Season 3 still 8-9 months away, I decided to read the book to see how different it was from the TV series. It's clear pretty early on that much of the TV show is completely fiction, aside from the broad outlines of the plot. The strength of the book lies in its ability to bring the inmates personal situations to life for the reader. Not much time is spent on the crimes the women committed to put them in jail, but most of them were for non-violent offences (or else they wouldn't have been in a minimum security prison). What becomes immediately apparent is the complete waste of time and resources that prison represents. After reading this book, I'm convinced that prison has no place in our society for non-violent criminals.

Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison is an excellent and fascinating memoir. It's well-written and impossible to put down. The author takes full responsibility for the choices that she made that landed her in prison; at the same time she makes clear how senseless the prison system has become in the U.S.

Orange is the New Black: A Netflix Original Series, although almost completely fictional, is an addictive and fascinating drama. The characters are well-developed and intriguing, there's a lot of action and suspense, and it's difficult to stop watching.

I recommend both the book and the television series.