It’s common knowledge to fans that Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black is based on the events of the real-life Piper Kerman—known on the show as Piper Chapman, played by Taylor Schilling.

As the audience now says goodbye to Red, Mulgrew has spent her time after Orange Is the New Black writing a new memoir titled How to Forget, and will appear in the third season of Mr. Praise for Orange Is the New Black “Fascinating. The true subject of this unforgettable book is female bonding and the ties that even bars can’t unbind.”—People (four stars) “I loved this book. It’s a story rich with humor, pathos, and redemption.

1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Orange is the New Black

Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison is a memoir by Piper Kerman, detailing her experiences as an inmate at a federal women’s prison, where she served for just over a year. Piper was a privileged, well-educated white womanfrom an upper-middle-class family.Shortly after graduating college in the early 1990s, Piper became involved with her girlfriend Nora Jansen’s international drug smuggling operation. Despite the glamour of her jet-setting lifestyle, however, Piper had growing apprehensions about what she was doing. She knew that Nora was untrustworthy, dangerous, and fully willing to exploit her for her own advantage. Nora thought little of putting Piper at great legal and physical risk if it meant more profit for the drug smuggling operation. Ultimately, Piper ended her relationship with Nora and cut off all ties with her.

Indictment and Plea

Piper began a more conventional, risk-free life, glad to have put her criminal past behind her. She landed a job as a television producer and editor, working primarily on infomercials and met and fell in love with a man named Larry. He was not the risk-seeking, hip, bohemian type she had traditionally been attracted to, but he was good-hearted, kind, and loved her intensely—and Piper found, this was all she ever wanted.

The happy couple moved to New York City for work in 1998. That May, US customs officials appeared at their home to tell Piper that she was indicted on conspiracy charges related to her old drug smuggling activities. Nora had given Piper’s name to the authorities, which had resulted in her being charged as a co-conspirator. Terrified of a potentially long sentence if she risked trial, Piper accepted a plea deal and awaited her fate. After Piper pleaded guilty, Larry proposed to her. She knew that together, they would be able to overcome whatever the future had in store for them.

Piper was, at last, sentenced on December 8, 2003 to 15 months in prison at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, a minimum-security women’s prison. The unknown date which Piper had dreaded for five years was at hand.

Self-Surrender

Piper self-surrendered in February 2004, a decade after committing the offense for which she was convicted. As a glaring symbol of her privilege, Piper ate a foie gras sandwich while she waited to be processed. All throughout the dehumanizing intake process, the guards barked orders at her and treated her with minimal human dignity and respect. Piper underwent a humiliating strip search, during which she was forced to strip, bend over, squat, and cough, while the correctional officer (CO) performed a cavity search. At last, she was issued her prisoner number. She was no longer Piper Kerman; she was now federal inmate #11187-424, a new identity for a new life.

Once she arrived at the minimum security camp, the inmates showed Piper around and introduced her to the basic rhythms of prison life that all inmates were required to follow. These included daily prisoner counts, assigned meal times, and bed inspections. All in all, it was a barrage of unfamiliar (and seemingly arbitrary) rules and regulations. Piper learned that everything in prison was governed by a maddeningly slow and inefficient bureaucracy.

At prison orientation a few days later, the female warden warned the new arrivals about sexual contact in prison and reminded the women that non-consensual sex was strictly prohibited. As she spoke, Piper realized she wasn’t talking about sexual contact between inmates—she was talking about unwanted advances from the guards.

Orange Is The New Black Book Synopsis

Adjusting to Prison Life

Piper Memoir Orange Is The New Black

Race determined and defined the culture at Danbury. Segregation was the unwritten rule behind bars. Most of Piper’s friends were white, predominantly Italian-American. The prison officials reinforced this dynamic by lumping racial groups together into the same cell blocks, which, characteristically, bore stereotyped names (“Spanish Harlem” for the Latina inmates, “The Ghetto” for the African-American inmates).

Piper clung to daily rituals and routines in an effort to give some order to her day and provide herself with some agency and mastery over her life—giving herself some power and control in a situation where she otherwise had none. So she would make her coffee the same way every morning; sit in the yard at her usual spot; and internalize the old prison mantra of doing your time, not letting your time do you.

Orange Is The New Black Memoir

Piper had to overcome some of her own subconscious prejudices about the kinds of people she now found herself living with. One day, a black inmate named Rochelle asked Piper if she could borrow one of her books. Piper was ashamed to discover that she harbored racialized fears that Rochelle would steal her book. When Rochelle returned it a week later, Piper mentally chided herself for assuming the worst about Rochelle. She saw that she had much to learn about humility—how was she any different than these other women?

Finding Community

Memoirs By Black Women

Inmates managed to hold on to their culture and dignity, even inside prison. The West Indian women and “Spanish mamis” managed to make genuinely delicious Latin and Caribbean dishes, using nothing more than junk food from the commissary as ingredients. The human spirit and passion for creativity could not be extinguished, even at Danbury.

Piper tried hard not to advertise her privilege and unique status as an upper-middle-class white woman in a prison disproportionately populated by underprivileged people of color. She turned down an opportunity to become the prison van driver (a coveted high-status position) and declined an offer from Pop, a powerful and influential leader among the white prisoners, to become her bunkmate, lest she be perceived as racist if she chose to leave her black bunkmate, Natalie.

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Although Piper had chosen not to bunk with...

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