It is impossible not to compare Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison to the Netflix series by the same name while reading. While the book tells about one woman’s experiences in a women’s prison, the series is very clearly a dramatic reimagining of it. Many of Kerman’s real-life experiences are touched upon in the show with a few twists, but the reality is that as an inmate, she was not privy to a lot of details and information that are needed to have a more fully realized picture of what was going on.
While book and show both have a sense of camaraderie, the book ignores the fact that the women in prison are convicted criminals. Some are there for better reasons than others and some do not deserve the long drawn out sentences they have been given, but by and large, the women are guilty of crimes that landed them where they are. (This is not to say there can’t possibly be someone who was wrongfully convicted or that perhaps decades-old crimes committed by someone who has clearly changed should not be looked at differently or that prison inmates are not frequently mistreated.) Likely this stems from the fact that, as Kerman notes frequently, you are not supposed to ask an inmate about their crime. You could talk about anything else: about how long they were in for (perhaps one of the most popular options), where they were from, family and friends. But you did not bring up what had landed them in prison in the first place. If they wanted, they could broach the issue themselves, but that was not particularly common. Whether that allowed Kerman to simply believe the best in all of her fellow inmates or whether she deluded herself into believing that none of them truly deserved to be there is unclear. In the show you often think, “They deserve to be here, though they should not be treated so poorly,” in the book it almost feels like you are suppose to think everyone in the prison system should be released. This likely also stems from the lack of real violence that Kerman experienced or saw during her stay. She did not get into fist fights or witness an old woman stabbing someone from behind. Without any obvious signs of violence, it is easy to forget that crimes were committed.
Rarely does Kerman seem bitter about her time in prison (she clearly things going to jail for a decades-old crime is ridiculous, but she did not seem angry). She continually acknowledges that it was ultimately her own fault that she was there—she came to understand that her drug smuggling involvement, however peripheral her role might have been, played a part in destroying many of these other women’s lives by helping them gain access to drugs. This may be true, but it leaves the novel feeling a little Kumbaya-esque and therefore lacking in its complexity.
The Piper of the book seems more well-meaning than the one in the series, who tends to come off as utterly self-centered as often as not. Several times other characters tell her she is not a nice person and each time she appears to be completely gobsmacked by this revelation (or “unjust accusation” as she appears to view it). While the Piper of the book takes everything in stride and seems to learn to love her fellow inmates, Piper of the show seems to take all the wrong lessons—how to manipulate, take revenge, punish others. This makes for much more interesting TV viewing of course. People who are just well-intentioned and nice all the time, who have everything work out for the best, are rarely interesting to watch for extended periods of time.
The book seemed to lack a bigger view of the internal politics bound up in prison gangs. It was perhaps too tame and it felt like it was an attempt to cover broad strokes while occasionally giving a small anecdote to illustrate the point. I found it difficult to really get the feel of life in prison, to “be there.” The best books can transport you to all sorts of different places, but this book did not do that. For me, the most interesting thing about the book is seeing how they changed it for TV.
For more Orange is the New Black, check out episode 3 Hunger is the New Black and read my post on the second season here.
SHARE:
