Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison

Kerman finds San Francisco to be a “welcome refuge” (16) from her former life. She constantly thinks back to her old life and vows to never “relinquish [her] sense of self again, to anything or anyone” (16). She gets two jobs and dates around but never commits. She keeps her former life a secret from everyone except a close circle of friends.

Eventually, Kerman meets Larry, and the two quickly become best friends. While the relationship is mostly platonic, she kisses him one night while they are dancing at a nightclub:

That got his attention. And mine. What the hell was I thinking? I proceeded to pretend for several months that nothing had happened, while I tried to sort out my feelings. Larry was nothing like any guy I’d been involved with in the past. For one thing, I liked him. For another, he was a short, scrappy, eager-to-please guy with big blue eyes, a big grin, and exceedingly big hair (18).

They both eventually realize they’re in love with each other, and when Larry receives an offer for an amazing job back east, she moves with him: “Larry and I landed in New York in 1998—he was an editor at a men’s magazine, I worked as a freelance producer—and settled in a West Village walk-up” (19). However, one day, two officers appear at her door and say that she’s been “indicted for money laundering and drug trafficking” (20). Kerman immediately freaks out, runs to Larry’s office, and explains everything. Larry is calm and says that it will be okay; her family reacts the same way when she tells them everything, much to her surprise.

Kerman’s lawyer explains the severity of the charges: She can testify and attempt to get out of the charges against her, or she can plead guilty. If she testifies and loses, she will receive the maximum sentence; if she pleads guilty, she will receive a much shorter sentence. She plays it safe and pleads guilty. Just as she’s about to go to prison, the authorities arrest Alaji, and the court postpones her prison date so that she can testify against him. After six longs years of waiting, knowing that she would eventually have to go to prison, Kerman finally receives a sentence of 15 months in prison. She’s engaged to Larry, and he vows to stay by her side throughout it all. 

Larry drops Kerman off at the prison: “February 4, 2004, more than a decade after I had committed my crime” (32). Kerman decides that she “would have to be brave. Not foolhardy, not in love with risk and danger, not making ridiculous exhibitions of myself to prove that [she] wasn’t terrified—really, genuinely brave” (35).

A female guard takes Kerman to a holding cell, where she makes Kerman strip naked while she searches her. Afterwards, Kerman receives an ID card with her prisoner identification number. She’s then ushered in to see Mr. Butorsky, who will be her counselor while she’s in the prison camp. He warns her that she must watch the her fellow inmates:

‘Some of them are alright. No one’s going to mess with you unless you let them. Now, women, they don’t fight much. They talk, they gossip, they spread rumors. So they may talk about you. Some of the girls are going to think you think you’re better than them’ (39).

An official escorts Kerman to the prison camp where she receives her “creature comforts” such as “two sheets, a pillowcase, two cotton blankets, a couple of cheap white towels, and a face cloth” (40). Another inmate named Minetta shows her around. Since Kerman is a newcomer, she’s staying in a room that houses multiple women. Eventually, once she’s more settled, she’ll move into a dorm, which is more private and houses two women only.

The cafeteria serves liver and lima beans for dinner. Afterwards, Kerman convinces a counselor to let her briefly call Larry. While this rejuvenates her spirit, she leaves the room feeling overwhelmed by the newness of everything; there are many rules, spoken and unspoken, that she has yet to learn. Rather than risk breaking any, she tries to stay a wallflower. She immediately notices the recurring “tribal ritual” of admitting the new inmates: “When a new person arrived, their tribe—white, black, Latino, or the few and far between ‘others’—would immediately make note of their situation, get them settled, and steer them through their arrival” (49).

The other white women try to help Kerman feel more comfortable, offering her luxury items that could normally only be purchased in the commissary, such as “a bar of soap, a real toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo, some stamps and writing materials, some instant coffee, Cremora, a plastic mug, and perhaps most important, shower shoes to avoid terrible foot fungi” (49). 

Kerman and the other new inmates attend an orientation meeting the next morning. She immediately likes a fellow new inmate from Brooklyn named Janet, a “young black woman [with] rough cornrows and [an] aggressively set jaw” (53). Representatives from each department in the prison visit the new women. The grand finale is a visit from Warden Kuma Deboo, the woman who oversees the whole prison. However, the other inmates are quick to point out that although that’s her title, they only see her on rare occasions. Deboo reassures the women: “If anyone at this institution is pressuring you sexually, if anyone is threatening you or hurting you, I want you to come directly to me” (55). The other inmates regard these words as a joke: If a guard sexually harasses an inmate, it’s always the guard’s word against the inmate’s.

Kerman is stuck as an A&O, or an Admissions and Orientation. During this time, she “can’t have a job, can’t go to GED classes, can’t go to chow until everyone else goes, can’t say a word when ordered to shovel snow at odd hours of the night” (56). One morning, Kerman suddenly awakes to realize that an officer is calling her name over the loudspeaker. She rushes late to the correctional officer’s (CO’s) office and receives a reassignment to snow shoveling duty.

That first weekend, she gets a visit from Larry, and the next day her mom visits. On both occasions, they talk during the entire five-hour visiting window, trying to catch up the best they can. Afterwards, as is the rule after an inmate has a visit, Kerman must pull her pants down, squat, and cough, “which would theoretically cause any hidden contraband to clatter to the floor” (60). Some women are so embarrassed by this act that they avoid visits.

Kerman tries to adjust to her surroundings. She keenly observes everything and everyone around her, but mostly, she delves into the innumerous books that her family and friends regularly send her. While the steady book supply helps her feel sane, “the literary avalanche was proof that [she] was different, a freak: ‘She’s the one with the books’” (62). However, she loves to loan out her books to anyone who’s interested, and this helps her make friends. Annette, one of her older and wiser bunkmates, befriends Kerman: Annette helps her navigate the tricky nuances of prison social etiquette, reminds her of the schedules, and welcomes her into her own social circle. Annette introduces Kerman to her friend Nina, who is Kerman’s age, and the two quickly become friends.

The prison food leaves much to be desired, so Kerman mostly only eats veggies from the scant salad bar. Kerman first meets Pop in the dining hall, where she works. Pop is an older woman, nearing the end of her lengthy sentence, and she’s well respected throughout the prison. When she first meets Kerman, she scolds her for saying something bad about the food. However, Pop and Kerman end up becoming close friends.

Kerman is quick to see that racialism is pervasive throughout the camp. Even the dorms divide according to racial stereotypes: “A Dorm was known as ‘the Suburbs,’ B Dorm was dubbed ‘the Ghetto,’ and C Dorm was ‘Spanish Harlem’” (67). 

By two weeks in, Kerman is getting good at cleaning, which is vital because the cleanest rooms during inspection get to eat first. A new woman comes to stay in the room that Kerman is in, and Kerman initially identifies her as “Latina.” However, a Dominican woman corrects her and says, “We call ourselves Spanish around here, honey. Spanish mamis” (72).

Kerman finally receives an assigned cube in B Dorm, which she will share with Natalie, an older, highly respected inmate who’s nearing the end of her sentence. Kerman is excited to get her own space, noting that the dorms “turned out to be large, semisubterranean basement rooms that were a maze of beige cubicles, each housing two prisoners, a bunk bed, two metal lockers, and a stepladder” (74). Although Natalie doesn’t share many details about her personal life, she and Kerman quickly become friends.

Valentine’s Day comes and goes, and many of the inmates make each other cards. Kerman is finally able to buy items from the commissary. She really wants to buy a “cheap little portable headset radio for $42.90. The radio would have cost about $7 on the street” (78), but it’s out of stock. Without the radio, she can’t listen to the sound on the TV, and she has nothing to listen to during her runs.

There are two bathrooms in B Dorm, but one is decidedly more disgusting than the other; Kerman calls this one “Hell-mouth” because “[d]uring the warmer months when the ground was not frozen, little black maggots would periodically appear in the shower area, squirming on the tiles” (82). As the days and weeks progress, Kerman tries to get into a routine: “I tore through every book I received, stayed out of the TV rooms, and watched with envy as people went off to their prison jobs” (85). However, she quickly grows bored and applies for a job. While she would like to be part of “Puppies Behind Bars,” a job that allows inmates to live with and train puppies to become therapy or bomb-sniffing dogs, her sentence is too short for the program.