Looking at the memoir that started it all in anticipation for Season Three
The novel, Orange is the New Black, is a truly inspirational memoir written by the real Piper Kerman, who spent 13 months in prison for money laundering and drug trafficking during her vibrant youth. An incident she thought she had put behind her, Kerman was surprised one morning as a police officer knocked on her door to tell her that she would need to face a horrible mistake she made 10-years-ago. The novel, being the eye-opener that it is, ultimately resulted in Netflix’s hit series.
The novel is quite different from the series. Most of the characters’ names are changed, the character development is different, and the relationships within the prison walls are altered. This, of course, is expected, as the series would need new events and drama to feed off to continue its presence. However, though many details are inconsistent between the novel and the show, the morals and lessons are the same. Both mediums portray the overwhelming sense of sisterhood and companionship that the inmates portray, as well as the sad truths about the American justice system.
When Kerman was convicted, her family and friends had absolutely no idea about her past mistakes and choices. The day that the police officer showed up at her door, she had just moved in to a new home with her partner, Larry, who soon became her fiancé. Along with Kerman’s experiences inside prison, the reader also gains perspective on what it was like for Kerman during the stages before her imprisonment—what it was like to break the news to her family, to her friends, and to the love of her life. Kerman’s journey through prison embodies many layers. She not only retells the life she had within those walls, but she also shares the way she kept up with the life she had put on hold outside of prison. With weekly visits from Larry and her family, Kerman illuminates the constant struggle she had with having to stay put as the people she loved outside of prison continued on with their lives.
In her memoir, Kerman exposes the extreme injustices that female inmates face in the American system, including the disturbing fact that rather than trying to correct inmates and teach them how to change their lives, they physically, sexually, mentally and verbally abuse them, provide them with little education, and throw them back into society without any resources. Consequently, many newly-released inmates end up returning to jail at some point along the way, either because they did not have a place to live, they did not have the resources they needed to find employment, or they did not develop the capacity to correct their mistakes. What good does holding people in an institution for years do, if their time is not spent learning to better themselves as individuals?
Though the memoir is about Kerman’s unique story of incarceration, she manages to give the reader a strong sense of the people she interacts with in prison, along with the relationships she builds with other inmates. Though she does focus on her perspective of her own journey, she also provides incredible insight on the emotions and experiences of others. Kerman humanizes the dehumanized. The jail becomes a community of people that share the same pain, the same fears, and the same stresses. Empathy becomes a sole factor in the memoir. These women, having been totally isolated and reduced to less-than-human by society’s standards, find solace in each other by comforting and caring for each other.
Season Three of the Netflix series is approaching this month, and though it has been led astray from the original novel at this point, the lessons that Kerman provides in her memoir are not lost on the show. In fact, the T.V. series does something that the memoir does not fully accomplish, and that is, showing its viewers the perspective of multiple characters. Through strong characterization, the series takes us on a journey into the lives of all of its characters, providing an even stronger sense of the morals that the original Piper wanted to share with readers in her memoir.
In the meantime, as we wait for Season Three to finally become available to stream, the original novel Orange is the New Black has the ability to change the way we perceive certain people and certain aspects of life. Kerman inspires us to break institutional walls and to see past the orange jumpsuit.