Title: Orange is the New Black; My Year in a Woman's Prison: A Memoir by Piper Kerman
Details: Copyright 2010, paperback edition 2011, Random House Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187–424— one of the millions of people who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system. From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and at times enraging, Kerman’s story offers a rare look into the lives of women in prison—why it is we lock so many away and what happens to them when they’re there."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I have yet to watch the now-legendary Netflix show! I have, however, heard a lot about it, including the fact it's generally believed to be one of the first TV shows to cement streaming services' status as a true challenge to network and cable television. But first, it was a book! In the past few years, I've seen many shows and movies without reading the book first and it's a habit that I've been wanting to break. I understand that this is an nontraditional format for that (a real-life memoir becomes the basis of a fictionalized TV show) but I still wanted to read the book first.
How I Liked It: I've always said that I don't care if a book if fiction or non-fiction, I care if it's a good story. It's always been that way. Because when you get down to it, isn't it all telling a story in the end?
I've read a few recent prison memoirs now, largely of the innocent (or at least, the purportedly innocent) and they were accused of far worse crimes and kept in far worse conditions. This author, by contrast, admits to her crime (money-laundering, a federal charge) and her prison, while unpleasant, was still relatively nice enough to warrant it to be considered for Martha Stewart's prison stay.
I had some reservations about any information I was gleaning about the US prison system from a rich, white, cis woman. I still do. However, a large part of Kerman's story is the fact "people like her" are an anomaly in the US prison system and she makes a reasonable effort to address her privilege (save for some notable exceptions, but we'll get to that).
We start with a relatively brief bit of memoir to get us to understand how a privileged Smith graduate ended up money-laundering for an international drug ring (spoiler: thrill-seeking). The book opens with Kerman committing her crime, then flashes back to how she got there and where she went after, which leads us through her legal woes, conviction, time, and (very briefly) her release.
Turns out an untrustworthy girlfriend, of the equally bored, rich, white, and privileged, made money dealing heroin in South America, among other places. Her younger, fresh-out-of-college girlfriend (Kerman) was thrilled by the attention of a sophisticated, stylish older woman, and got roped into helping via money-laundering. Disenchanted with her adventure, Kerman parted ways with her international drug-dealing girlfriend, and set about making a new life, which included a serious partner and friends and a career in New York City. But it turns out she didn't quite get away with her crime, as she learns one day, five years after leaving her girlfriend, that she's being indicted. From there she spends another half-decade in legal limbo before being finally sentenced to fifteen months in a federal prison a decade after she committed the crime.
While the book doesn't lack for interesting characters and compelling plot before Kerman reaches prison, in prison is obviously where the book really finds its footing. Kerman details every step of the process from surrendering possessions to learning a vast new set of social rules both spoken and unspoken with both officials and fellow inmates.
Food, sleep, philosophy, spirituality, coping, relationships inside and outside of the prison, and much more provide a rich and vivid narrative that makes for a immensely compelling read. The fascinating backstories of the characters (some invented, some based on reality, some real people) linger and for such a vast cast of characters, it's truly impressive that they mostly come across as that distinct. I've spoken in the past about the importance of narrative voice in a memoir, and Kerman manages a deft hand, keeping her voice distinct, but not going out of her way to either make you like her or make you understand her; you do feel like you know her.
I'm reading the paperback edition which apparently offers a bit more of an ending to Kerman's story. In the original, she is left running to meet her future husband as she is finally released. In the paperback extension, she has a couple pages where she discusses getting a pizza with her husband, the fact she would report for parole, going back to work at a friend's tech company a week later, and her inherent privilege in those things, and more of what usually greets a less-privileged former inmate when they are released. Given the depth we're given as Kerman enters prison, a similar handling of what it was like to readjust to life outside would've been welcome. The closest we get is Kerman describing her feelings (for exactly two sentences) of overwhelming emotion reducing her to tears on occasion, as the fact of her freedom occurs to her. I have my suspicions that a follow-up book was already in the planning stages and thus why she was brief in this one.
As I mentioned, I struggled a lot with the ethics of this book. She raises important awareness about the US prison system (the paperback has a lengthy resource section on prison reform, and Kerman has become something of an activist) and throughout the book she's fairly aware and open about her privilege. But in the end, we're still reading a bestselling book and accompanying enormously popular TV series about the experience of a rich white cis woman, rather than the marginalized women who are supporting characters in her book and who make up the bulk of the US prison population.
Still, this (both the book and the show) must certainly serve as a jumping off point for some people on the subject and hopefully Kerman herself uplifts the voices of Black, brown, and trans women telling their own stories.
As a memoir (which she cautions for legal and privacy reasons, contains both fact and fiction about the characters, changing names and distinguishing characteristics) and thus as a story, it's a fascinating one.
Notable: While Kerman maintains a fairly good sense of her privileges throughout the book, there's a notable experience in particular that's pretty awful. She encounters a trans woman in prison, who is met with not inconsiderable transphobia (CONTENT WARNING! TRANSPHOBIA INCLUDING DEADNAMING, GENITAL SPECULATION, AND DELIBERATE MISGENDERING AMONG OTHER THINGS):
Vanessa Robinson was a male-to-female transsexual who had started her bid down the hill in the FCI. Within the confines of the Danbury plantation, her presence was notorious; the COs insisted on calling her "Richard", her birth name. One day the Camp was abuzz.
"The he-she is coming up!!!"
There was great anticipation of Miss Robinson's arrival. Some women swore they would not speak to her; others professed fascination. The West Indian women and some of the Spanish mamis expressed disgust; the born-agains made outraged noises; and the middle-class white women looked bemused or nervous. The old-timers were blasé "Ah, we used to have a bunch of girls that were trying to go the other way. They were protesters," said Mrs Jones.
"The other way?" I asked.
"Go from a girl to a boy, always bitching about their medication and bullshit," she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand.
I soon got my first glimpse of Vanessa-- all six feet, four inches of blond, coffee-colored, balloon-breasted almost-all-woman that she was. An admiring crowd of young women had gathered around her, and she lapped up the attention. This was no unassuming "shim" unfortunately incarcerated and trying to get along; Vanessa was a full-blown diva. It was as if someone had shot Mariah Carey through a matter-disrupter and plunked her down in our midst.
Diva though she was, Vanessa had the intelligence and maturity to handle her new situation with some discretion. She began her time in the Camp almost demurely, with no histrionics. Several young women had come up from the FCI with her, including a startlingly beautiful young woman named Wainwright who was her bosom buddy-- they both sang in the church choir. Wainwright was petite, with green cat eyes, an enigmatic smile, and a college education-- most of the other black women worshipped her on sight. They were a visually hilarious pair, similar-looking in theory yet dramatically different.
For their first several weeks at the Camp they hung together most of the time Vanessa was friendly if approached but more reserved than her reservation and appearance would suggest. She went to work in the kitchen. "He can't cook," scoffed Pop, who fell into the "disgusted" category and was disinclined to be kind, although there as some truth in her culinary assessment.
[...]
Vanessa's arrival in B Dorm evoked some eye-rolling from Miss Natalie, but she was more tolerant than her friend Ginger Soloman who demanded, "Is that what you want to see in the bathroom, Miss Piper? Well, is it?!" I meekly pointed out that Vanessa was post-op, but no, I wasn't necessarily looking for a free show.
Free shows were available. As Vanessa settled in, she got more boisterous, and she was thrilled to display her surgical glory at the merest suggestion. Soon half the Camp had seen what she'd got. Her D-cup breasts were her pride and joy, and given our height difference they were often the first things I saw in the morning. She was certainly better looking than many of the prisoners who had been born to our gender, but close quarters revealed some of her more masculine qualities. Her pits were positively bushy-- she said that if she couldn't wax them, then fuck it-- and, in the hot, close quarters of B Dorm in the summer, she smelled unmistakably like a sweaty man. Vanessa was deprived of her hormones in prison and thus retained several male characteristics that would have been less evident otherwise, notably her voice. While she spoke in a high, little-girl voice most of the time, she could switch at will to a booming, masculine Richard-voice. She loved to sneak up behind people and scare the crap out of them this way, and she was very effective at quieting a noisy dining hall, roaring, "Y'all hush up!" Best of all were her Richardian encouragements on the softball field, where she was a most soft-after teammate. That bitch could hit.
Vanessa was an entertaining and considerate neighbor, cheerful and drag-queen funny, smart and observant and sensitive to what others were thinking and feeling. (pgs 181, 182, and 183)
Where to even start.
I'm aware that this book was originally published in 2010, and trans awareness has come a long, long way in the past few years alone due to the tireless and relentless work of activists.
For one example, in 2004, when these events took place, JK Rowling's transphobic hate-filled screeds probably would've been met with some confusion by the masses, but probably not what happened last year. In 2020, they caused a mass exodus of fans and widespread condemnation across even most mainstream media (although it still deigned to call the remarks "anti-trans" rather than "transphobia") and broad discussions about whether or not her work was still consumable, even if she wasn't receiving financial benefit from it (all of this response completely justified, I might add: if people condemning her are operating on a 2020 mindset, so is Rowling's hatred, bigotry, and willful ignorance).
So perhaps in the decade plus since she wrote this, Kerman has hopefully learned a lot about why what she wrote was disgusting ("sweaty man", "drag queen", "visually hilarious"). She does mention that she liked Vanessa and talks about her positive attributes (albeit in the fashion I quoted above), including offering encouragement and helpful instruction to other inmates. When Vanessa left, Piper details the big party they threw for her, with her friend having to face the wall when singing to her, lest she break down crying, and many of the other women similarly moved. She caps it with Vanessa opining that perhaps she had to come to the prison to really become a woman. (Sigh.)
I'm aware of the fact that this character existing at all is part of the reason the first transgender actor was nominated for an Emmy, and the fact it was groundbreaking for a trans actor to play a trans character as Laverne Cox did is not to be discarded. But I think we can acknowledge major flaws along with major representation.
The second issue is a big thornier. I believe that the nuance of human sexuality and gender allow for people to identify as they choose, so long as they're not promoting misinformation about a gender/orientation, particularly in a way that could be harmful.
Kerman, in this memoir, talks about being a lesbian. She is surprised then to find herself interested in the man who would become her boyfriend, fiancé during her prison stint, and finally her husband, since she wasn't interested in men at all. So the logical conclusion is that Kerman is bisexual (SIDE BAR! Yes, you can be bi and have a preference. NO, having a preference for one gender over another is NOT what makes you bisexual. Bisexual means "attraction to all genders"/"attraction regardless of gender" and has meant that since it was reclaimed by the Queer community. It was only coined at a time where there were believed to be only two. We've gotten past the origins of "lesbian" and "gay", why can't some people get past the origin of bi? Food for thought).
Kerman, outside of the memoir, has defined herself as bisexual. She also mentions outside of the memoir that she came out as a lesbian at 18.
So why on earth in the actual memoir does she define herself as an "ex lesbian"? For context, Kerman is met with prison officials who lay down the law about no sex between inmates and early on, one counselor mentioning that he's "old-fashioned" about homosexuality and Kerman finding herself trying hard not to smirk. In the context of sexual relationships with other women within the prison, she talks about keeping her "ex lesbian past" to herself.
Why is it a problem that Kerman (in the memoir) defined herself as "ex lesbian" rather than bisexual? Well, for one, bisexuality still faces a considerable amount of erasure (and there are bisexual women, for various reasons, who refer to themselves as lesbians), for another, "ex lesbian" along with "ex gay" generally refers to the conversion therapy movement (I won't go into detail here, but it's a hideous movement that has involved torturing people, including some of them children, until they claim to be straight). What might have been meant as a sort of joke (at least, I assume; Kerman uses it in a fairly straight-forward manner), reveals a glaring (and irresponsible) lack of awareness.
Final Grade: For content separate from Queer issues, A
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