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

Much of the memoir is about finding community while in prison. When Kerman first arrives at Danbury, many of the women come together to welcome her; they share comfort items with her, show her the ropes, and embrace her with warm hospitality. This initial hospitality eventually turns into friendship and community as the women share homemade food dishes, stories, clothing, and beauty trends with Kerman. While prison has the potential to make inmates feel isolated, the women in Danbury come together to create a sense of community.

One way that community forms in prison is through the development of mother/daughter bonds. On the outside, many of the women are mothers, daughters, or caretakers, and once in prison, they must translate these roles through a new lens. As Kerman notes in Chapter 9, many of the women break off into “mother-daughter pairs,” with the older women serving as “prison mamas” (131) who adopt the younger women. The mamas, many of whom have children on the outside, get to fulfill the longing they have to care for their children, while the young women look to their prison mamas for “advice, attention, food, commissary loans, affection, guidance, even discipline” (131).