My Year in a Women's Prison
by Piper Kerman
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2010
320 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
A compelling, often hilarious, and unfailingly compassionate portrait of life inside a women's prison, by a Smith College graduate who did the crime and did the time.
When Piper Kerman was sent to prison for a ten-year-old crime, she barely resembled the reckless young woman she was shortly after graduating Smith College when she committed the misdeeds that caught up with her. Happily ensconced in a New York City apartment, with a promising career and an attentive boyfriend, she was suddenly forced to reckon with the consequences of her very brief, very careless dalliance in the world of drug trafficking.
She spent 15 months in prison, 13 of them at the infamous women's correctional facility in Danbury, CT, which she found to be no "Club Fed." There she not only gained a unique perspective on the criminal justice system, but also met a surprising and varied community of women living under exceptional circumstances. In Orange Is the New Black, Piper Kerman tells the dramatic story of those long months locked up in a place with its own codes of behavior and often arbitrary hierarchies, where a practical joke is as common as an unprovoked fight, and where the uneasy relationship between prisoner and jailer is constantly and unpredictably recalibrated.
Revealing, moving, and enraging, Orange Is the New Black is a bold and wholly original entry in the canon of prison literature.
"Kerman's account radiates warmly from her skillful depiction of the personalities she befriended in prison .... Kerman's ordeal indeed proved life altering." - Publishers Weekly
“I loved this book, to a depth and degree that caught me by surprise. Of course it’s a compelling insider’s account of life in a women’s federal prison, and of course it’s a behind-the-scenes look at America’s war on drugs, and of course it’s a story rich with humor, pathos and redemption: All of that was to be expected. 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
"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
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