in the stacks | orange is the new black

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I spent the first half of Orange is the New Black: My Year In a Women's Prison disappointed that it wasn't as scandalous as Netflix's version. I felt bad saying it out loud - I told Zander that it lacked excitement - there was no crime, no drama, and certainly no lesbian shower sex scenes. But I shook myself out of it, thank goodness, and really delved into the last half of the book for what it was, instead of what the show is. And it's so much better than the scandalized account. It's a real, deeply personal account of life inside the US prison system.

Piper Kerman was in a serious, committed relationship with a drug dealer 10 years prior to her stint in prison. For her, Piper agreed to deliver a suitcase of drug money across international borders. After that experience, she chose to leave the relationship and rebuild her life.

Piper and her boyfriend move to New York from San Francisco, where she has a booming career. Her life is interrupted when federal officers bring charges against her for the crime she committed 10 years ago.

Piper agrees to a deal but spends years battling in court, growing increasingly anxious about serving jail time. She's eventually sentenced to 13 months in Danbury Federal Correctional Institute, a women's prison.The rest is her story of living in prison.

Piper is so honest in this book. She talks openly about her privilege as a white and well-educated woman and how that made her stay infinitely more bearable than for many of the other women. She often received better treatment because she was seen as an anomaly, someone who "shouldn't" be in there. Piper uses her privilege for good. She writes appeals letters, shares the abundant supply of books and magazines she gets from friends and family, and even helps a woman earn her diploma.

She brings the inmates to life. She gives every woman in the prison system a voice and imbues them with the deepest humanity. She talks about the struggle for uneducated women to receive their high school diplomas and learn skills that could help them enter the workforce when they leave. She heartbreakingly tells accounts of women that don't have a support system so when they are released they have nowhere to go, struggle to find jobs, and end up back in jail. Jail becomes more of a family than some of the women have elsewhere.

Piper discusses how backwards our prison system is. For instance, she describes women who are in jail for drug charges who were forced into it, their lives threatened. She talks about the need for rehabilitation, prison services that prepare women for the world, and the sheer despondency of pregnant inmates whose children are taken away once they're born.

I cried throughout the entire ending of Piper's story. She owns her crime, she accepts the punishment, and she's able to move on with her life - marry a man she loves and pursue her career ambitions. But what about the women inside? What happens to them? Long after I closed the last page, their stories ran through my mind. Where are they now?