Considering the recent Emmy Awards and the South Branch’s most recent TV-centric post, it makes sense that the Main’s card catalog display, too, is inspired by a television show. Netflix’s award-winning series Orange is the New Black, inspired by Piper Kerman’s best-selling memoir with the same title, has enraptured millions of viewers with Kerman’s story of drug trafficking and consequential incarceration at a minimum-security women’s prison. The show and the memoir are quite different though, especially after the first six or so episodes. For example, in the book Piper and Alex (named Nora in the book) were not in the same prison, nor were there such rampant sexual activities between the female inmates. And while TV-Piper was starved out after insulting Red’s food (named Pop in the memoir), book-Piper was only scolded by the cook and the pair went on to have a good relationship.
Some other elements of the novel that seem to be missing, or at the very least scaled-down, include the camaraderie between inmates. On TV, Piper arrives to a hostile, un-accepting environment. When Piper arrives in prison in her memoir, she writes, “I avoided eye contact. Nonetheless women periodically accosted me: ‘You’re new? How are you doing, honey? Are you okay?’” Prisoners looked out for one another, though the race-division was definitely there. Still, there was less violence in this minimum security prison than the show lets on, and while sex and violence between inmates were far rarer than the Netflix version makes it seem, sexual harassment between guards and prisoners was a very real issue in Kerman’s memoir.
There is a myriad of reasons why people are drawn to both Kerman’s memoir and the Netflix version of Orange is the New Black, but prison stories in general are always an interesting read (or TV-show…or movie..). Below are some books displayed on the card catalog right by the circulation desk at the Main Branch, just waiting for you to come check them out.
Out of Orange: A Memoir by Catherine Cleary Wolters
Imagine seeing an ad for a new Netflix series, and realizing that one of the main characters is a representation of yourself. That is what inspired the real-life Alex Vause, named Catherine Cleary Wolters, to tell her side of the story. This memoir offers further insight into drug-trafficking than Piper’s original, and answers many questions that fans have about her side of the story.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover
In order for journalist Ted Conover to get the full, unbiased story of what happens in America’s prisons, he took a job for nearly a year as a New York State Prison officer in Sing Sing, a notorious maximum-security prison. Publisher’s Weekly writes, “With its nuanced portraits of officers and inmates, the book never preaches, yet it conveys that we ignore our prisons–an explosive (and expensive) microcosm of race and class tensions – at our collective peril.”
Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison by Nell Bernstein
The United States has one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world, including our children. Bernstein’s book explores the unethical ways in which incarcerated youth are treated – from physical violence to psychological torture – and presents an argument against juvenile prisons using the voices of juvenile prisoners, as well as theory and research. Here you will meet incarcerated teenagers, and hard-working politicians trying to shut down the practice.
