Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison

Piper Kerman’s 2010 memoir, Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, chronicles the 13 months she spent in a federal women’s prison in Danbury, Connecticut. In 2013, Netflix adapted the memoir into an original series featuring the experiences of fictional character Piper Chapman. The memoir follows a linear timeline, starting with the crime Kerman unknowingly commits right after college, the process leading up to the sentencing, and her time in Danbury Women’s Prison. While the memoir is a straightforward account of Kerman’s prison experience, it is also a self-reflective work that reveals Kerman’s change of perspective regarding her thoughts and actions.

The memoir encompasses three sections: Kerman’s time with then-girlfriend “Nora” (based on Cleary Wolters) that led to her eventual arrest, her time with her fiancé Larry and her criminal sentencing, and her time served in Danbury. The narrative structure also reflects the themes of the US prison system’s injustice, racial and socio-economic divides, and community while in confinement. The narrative chronicles the events in Kerman’s life without flashbacks, and true to the memoir genre, Kerman recounts her experiences from the first-person perspective. Kerman provides a true-to-life account of her experiences in Danbury, while also coloring the recollection of her imprisonment with her opinions of the prison system at large. While the memoir is not argumentative in nature, it does provide a critical view of the prison system and its failure to prepare inmates to succeed upon release.

The memoir centers on the friendships that Kerman makes while in Danbury and reflects, in addition to the prison experience, the individual incarcerated women. Kerman is quick to point out that her prison experience is very unlike that of the other women. Kerman is well educated, comes from a supportive family, and has money; each of these things makes her incarceration more bearable because she reads profusely to pass the time, she has nearly constant contact with her family and friends on the outside, and she can buy whatever she wants from the commissary. However, most other inmates come from impoverished backgrounds with little support on the outside. While Kerman has a beautiful home, a loving fiancé, and a job waiting for her upon her release, other Danbury inmates will be homeless and jobless when they leave. Kerman is very aware of these things while she’s in prison, and she has constant empathy for the other women she meets.

While the memoir covers many details of prison life, such as the day-to-day activities of an inmate, prison jobs, prison food, and prison friendships, it’s also very much about how the experience changes Kerman’s character. In the beginning of the memoir, when she is fresh out of college, she considers herself independent and rebellious against the norms of a traditional life. This is what first attracts her to Nora, a wealthy lesbian with a penchant for adventure. When Kerman gets in too deep with Nora’s illegal affairs, she tries to handle the situation herself instead of reaching out for the help of her family and friends. However, while in jail, she realizes just how much she needs the help and support of other people—both her family and friends on the outside as well as the friendships of the women on the inside. From the beginning to the end of the memoir, Kerman moves from an independent, self-described “stoic,” to an empathetic woman who understands the beauty of interdependency.