What I did not expect from this memoir was the affection, compassion, and even reverence that Piper Kerman demonstrates for all the women she encountered while she was locked away in jail. “I loved this book, to a depth and degree that caught me by surprise. Expert reporting and humane, clear-eyed storytelling.” Dave Eggers calls Orange is the New Black “a serious and bighearted book that depicts life in a women’s prison with great detail and-crucially-with empathy and respect for Piper Kerman’s fellow prisoners, most of whom did not and do not have her advantages and options…. What struck her the most about her experience, Kerman says, is the power of women’s communities: “the incredible ability of women to step up for each other, and to be resilient and to share their resiliency with other people.” Kerman’s memoir also raises provocative questions about the state of criminal justice in America, and how incarceration affects individuals and communities-and how it disproportionately impacts people of color. In her compelling, moving, and deeply funny book, Kerman explores the experience of incarceration and the lives of the women she met in prison: their friendships and families, mental illnesses and substance abuse issues, cliques and codes of behavior. Piper Kerman’s bestselling memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison chronicles her “crucible experience”-the 13 months she spent in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut after a brief involvement with drug trafficking sent her to prison on money laundering charges.

Female incarceration has risen by 800 percent in this country… I believe that we’ve reached a point in this country where most people are questioning whether we have made the best choices.” We have the biggest prison population in human history here in the United States.… The fastest-growing segment of our criminal justice system and that prison population has been women. “We have the biggest prison population in the world.

Piper kerman's memoir