PDF Summary:Orange is the New Black, by Piper Kerman

Orange Is the New Black is Piper Kerman’s memoir of her year at a federal women’s prison. Convicted on drug charges, the privileged, well-educated, white, upper-middle-class Piper is sent to prison in Danbury, Connecticut. There, she finds herself part of a community of women whose backgrounds and life experiences seem vastly different from her own. During her sentence, however, Piper comes to recognize the biases of her privilege; find community and family with her fellow inmates; and discover the systemic failures, gross power disparities, and overall injustices of the prison system.

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The women of Danbury did everything they could to hold onto some sliver of their humanity and their individuality. This included setting up a makeshift beauty salon on campus and sewing alterations into their uniforms (strictly prohibited by the regulations) to better match their personal style. Piper also found strength in her community outside prison—from her parents, Larry, and friends, who came from all over the country, dropping other commitments to visit her.

That spring, a new inmate came to the minimum security camp as a reward for her good behavior at the neighboring maximum security facility. This woman, “Crazy Eyes” Morena, attempted to seduce Piper. Piper knew that many women engaged in brief, experimental same-sex relationships during the period of their incarceration—going “gay for the stay” as it was called—but she was determined to remain faithful to Larry. Eventually, Piper politely but firmly rebuffed Crazy Eyes’s advances.

The key to survival and sanity was to avoid getting sucked into the petty drama and upheaval of prison life. So many women, Piper saw, became institutionalized and unable to function outside of prison—for them, prison had become their entire world. She witnessed many inmates returning to Danbury after being released, even requesting to be reassigned to their old cell blocks and bunks.

Hitting a Stride

After months of being told it was unavailable, Piper was finally able to acquire a portable radio from the commissary. The radio became her constant companion on her daily runs through the yard, the music connecting her back to the days of her youth, when she was carefree, foolish, and filled with limitless possibilities. Like so much else, it was a precious connection to her life in the world outside. On May 17, Piper celebrated her eighth anniversary with Larry and yearned for the day when she would be free again.

That spring, Piper helped two inmates earn their GEDs—her bunkmate Natalie and a longtime inmate named Mrs. Jones. This was important, because, without a high-school education, many inmates lacked the credentials to get decent jobs, often landing them right back in prison. Although Piper did a lot of the actual coursework (especially for the barely literate Mrs. Jones), she knew she was doing the right thing. When they graduated, Piper was overcome with emotion, openly weeping at seeing how these women had overcome such enormous obstacles to regain some power and agency over their lives.

One summer day, Piper enjoyed an unexpected trip to a picnic area by a lake, where the prisoners were laughing and enjoying the rare opportunity for outdoor recreation. Piper plunged her hands into the lake, feeling the cool water rush over her. Her work situation also improved that summer. After being humiliatingly sexually harassed by DeSimon, her odious boss in the electrical shop, Piper requested and received a work transfer away from him.

Systemic Failures

Piper saw how the American criminal justice system was very good at locking up addicts, but spectacularly bad at treating their addiction. The ideology driving the prison system was entirely retributive—there was almost no focus on restoration or rehabilitation, on making sure that people who were released from prison didn’t come back. The consequences of this failing system were everywhere—broken families, squandered opportunities, and ruined lives.

That fall, the annual job fair came to Danbury. This event was yet another reminder of how inadequately the prison was preparing its inmates to functionally reintegrate into mainstream society. When inmates had questions about job training, or what employers might be open to hiring women with a record, the prison’s job fair organizers simply had no answers. Pre-release programs, meanwhile, offered no information about how to access health and reproductive care services (obviously a priority for destitute women), find a job, secure housing, get drug treatment, and regain custody of their children.

Poor administration created unsafe conditions in the prison and exposed prisoners to the most sadistic and abusive impulses of individual COs who were eager to exploit the massive power disparity. One woman even got sent to solitary confinement after carrying on a (possibly non-consensual) sexual relationship with a male CO and getting sucked into a power struggle between the CO and a top administrator at the prison.

Prisoners had no recourse against abuse at the hands of the guards—such was the nature of the drastic power imbalance between male guards and female prisoners. These men fed off the power they wielded over powerless inmates, relishing their authority and capacity to inflict harm on those who couldn’t fight back.

Out of Danbury

In the second week of December, Piper’s lawyer contacted her to tell her that her time in Danbury would be coming to an end even sooner than she thought, but not because she was getting early release—she would soon be transported to Chicago to testify against an old drug ring associate. Piper would not be returned to Danbury before her ultimate release to say a final goodbye to her prison friends and family.

On January 3, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) put Piper on a plane. As she was leaving, the other women gave Piper advice for surviving the ordeal of the prison flight, with one prisoner urging her to smile at the guards escorting her onto the plane, so they wouldn’t cuff her too tight and kill her circulation.

Piper’s first destination wasn’t Chicago—it was the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center, a temporary holding facility that held prisoners either awaiting trial or waiting to testify in someone else’s trial. It would be Piper’s home until her time came to testify.

Seeing Nora

Life in Oklahoma City was dull and monotonous—the lack of windows made it difficult to even tell the passage of time. One day, Piper saw a familiar figure emerge from a cell and take her place on the breakfast line—Nora Jansen, the woman who’d sent her to prison and totally derailed her life. Piper fantasized about taking violent revenge, but, thankfully, was talked out of doing anything rash by one of her friends from Danbury who had also made the journey west with her.

In mid-January, Piper was told once more to pack out and board a plane to Chicago. But, this time, she was joined on the flight by Nora and her sister, Hester. The marshals even made Piper sit next to Nora on the long flight. After arriving in Chicago, Piper began to experience a thaw in her attitude toward her former girlfriend. They were no longer enemies with a tumultuous history. Now, they were fellow travelers on this bizarre journey together.

In this environment, Nora and her sister were the only people with whom she was capable of forming some sort of friendship. They formed a trio in Chicago, hanging out together, cooking meals with one another (the sisters were accomplished prison chefs), and generally lamenting the sloppy and unprofessional conditions at the Chicago correctional center.

Nora insisted to Piper that she had not given her name to the feds. Piper knew Nora to be a cunning and manipulative liar, but she decided to accept that she would never know the truth and let go of it. After nearly a decade of all-consuming hate toward Nora, it was time to make peace and move on.

The End

After the largely pointless and perfunctory trial, Piper focused on her impending March 4 release. Piper took the time to reflect and take stock of her experience and the wild journey she’d been on. She’d found a community of women in prison that had saved her and made her feel less alone in the world. Their struggle and success in preserving their humanity in the face of a system that sought to crush it was nothing short of heroic. They taught her compassion she never thought herself capable of and revealed strengths she never knew she had.

On March 4, Piper received her final call to “pack out.” (She was released two months early for good behavior.) The COs took her down the service elevator of the federal prison in Chicago. And just like that, she was on the streets again in broad daylight, a free woman once more. Larry was waiting outside to meet her. She sprinted over to him as fast as she could. Her long ordeal was over at last—but she would be forever shaped by her experience and the incredible women with whom she’d shared it.