Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison -- "A compelling, often hilarious, and unfailingly compassionate portrait of life inside a women’s prison."
I find that one-line description pretty accurate for this book. The author, Piper Kerman, ended up incarcerated in Danbury approximately 10 years after the drug offense that put her there. By the time of her incarceration, Kerman was living in NY, engaged to the man of her dreams, and hardly ever thought about the wild days of her youth, days that had involved a "very brief, very careless dalliance in the world of drug trafficking."
This book provides an inside look at what it was like for an upper-class white girl to spend 13 months in federal prison. From the surprised reactions her appearance provoked from almost everyone, to the many and varied characters she came across, to how her fellow inmates reacted to the Martha Stewart trial and the subsequent speculation about where she'd do her time, to the soul searching she did whilst behind bars, to ultimately coming face-to-face with the former friend who had ratted her out, Kerman doesn't hold much back.
This book also made me think a lot about how much of the prison's space and resources are taken up by the incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, and whether that should be the case. Whatever your position is on that issue, this book may broaden your understanding.
I give this book three stars. It was a fun read, with mild language throughout. If you are at all interested after reading this description, I'd definitely say read it someday.
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