ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

Author: Piper Kerman

Genre: Memoir, Standalone

Published: 2010

Personal Rating: 3/5 (just okay)

Yearly Count: 26

Product Description:

A compelling, often hilarious, and unfailingly compassionate portrait of life inside a women’s prison.


When Piper Kerman was sent to prison for a ten-year-old crime, she barely resembled the reckless young woman she’d been when, shortly after graduating Smith College, she’d committed the misdeeds that would eventually catch 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.



Kerman spent thirteen months in prison, eleven of them at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, where she met a surprising and varied community of women living under exceptional circumstances. In Orange Is the New Black, Kerman tells the story of those long months locked up in a place with its own codes of behavior and 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 offers a unique perspective on the criminal justice system, the reasons we send so many people to prison, and what happens to them when they’re there.

My rating does not reflect the writing. I enjoyed Piper's writing style and felt she articulated her experience with honesty. She took me through the process of how she learned the ropes and how she developed friendships. If I had no idea of what the basic mode of operation was in a prison, then this would be a good book for getting acquainted with the women's prison system. However, even just watching TV one gets the idea, so I did not find anything new or truly intriguing. Unfortunately for me, it was a bit bland. That's probably good for Piper and her experience there, but as a reader - not so much.

My thanks go to LibraryThing Early Reviews program and Random House, Inc. for sending me this ARC. It is scheduled to be released on April 6, 2010.