Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison

I haven't seen the televised dramatic version of this memoir, so I can't compare it to the book. I hope someone who has seen the HBO version reads the book and writes a comparison. I liked the book. It wasn't as melodramatic as I had expected. Tales of life in men's prisons are usually more violent and dramatic. Piper Kerman was sent to the women's prison in Connecticut because she helped drug runners do their business. She was a recent Smith graduate looking for excitement, high on risk taking. She conveys her understandable fears of what she's going to experience, but for the most part she avoids the scarier traps and gets out alive. Actually, it's not her fellow prisoners who cause her the most trouble, it's her suspicious and contemptuous guards who are the problem, so she's especially grateful to the officials who treat prisoners humanly. She has humor and an informal style in the telling, and she manages to keep up the suspense. She claims that she learns not to hurt the ones you love.

This is a true look inside a women's prison. I believe we can learn a lot from this book and make some changes in the system.

Service was excellent and item arrived quickly however once I attempted to play only a few disc will work I tried several players but not luck.

This was a great example of why we should never judge the book by its TV Show. After watching Orange is The New Black on Netflix, I thought that it was pretty good with good story line and entertaining subject. However, the book was entirely different from the set up, the story line, and side characters.

“If you are a relatively small woman, and a man at least twice your size is bellowing at you in anger, and you’re wearing a prisoner’s uniform, and he has a pair of handcuffs on his belt, I don’t care how much of a badass you think you are, you’ll be f***** scared”

After 10 years of carrying a case full of drug money, Piper has to do 15 months in prison. From trying to learn how to adjust to prison rules to finding people that she grows very affectionate for – this memoir is definitely worth reading. For those who already watched the series before they read a book – it’s not rated R as they show in the book and unfortunately, we do not get to hear the story from the other prisoners’ POV.

So if you’re interesting in a story about minimum security, I would suggest checking it out. I have never been a big “biography” fan but this book made me re-think that.