Orange is the New Black

Just started reading Piper Kerman's Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison. It sounds remarkably like college! She describes how you had to carry all your shower articles in a bag or caddy and then wait in line to use the good showers since half of them didn't have great pressure or hot water. Hello old Parrish hall! I had no idea that prison was so similar to dorm life. I guess in movies they always portray prisons as maximum security. In minimum, as Kerman describes, there are no bars on the individual cells- there are no cells, just a barracks like dorm system. Prison is a scary, almost mythical concept. It is enlightening to hear a middle class hippie describe her journey down the rabbit hole.

It's an interesting read- really brings out the gender and race issues in representations of prison. Jail stories are almost always about men and violence. So far in the book, what Kerman has noticed about prison is the racial divisions and the army like structure. I was turned on to it when Kerman's fiancé had a NYT Modern Love article describing visiting her every week in prison and the bond he developed with the other prison men. He writes really eloquently about what it is like to be one half of a couple in prison.