[by Piper Kerman]
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Dewey: 920
It appears I have a small confession to make. You know that Masters of Sex review I seem to keep promising you? Well, I have decided to keep that on the back burner for two main reasons.
1: I am having a hard time getting myself to finish reading the book (make of that what you will, and possibly consider it a roundabout review in a nutshell).
2: I have yet to decide how I am going to present it.
Masters and Johnson's research covered an enormous span of important issues about intimate physiology and human sexuality, issues that on the whole I am not too shy to handle. However, I want but am finding it difficult to approach my discussion in a way that balances humor (not for cheap laughs or giggles: grown-up sex is worth grown-up levity and laughter) and a proper handling of the medical breakthroughs Masters and Johnson achieved. Perhaps I am attempting to bite off more than I can chew -- after all, I am sure you are more interested in the answer to "should I read this or not?" than my own personal treatise on complex sexual issues. However, I am set on completing each review to the best of my ability and I do not think I am prepared to do that yet with Maier's book.
Hence my admission that I am backing away from this particular challenge for now. This is unusual for me, but as you can see I am not retreating from the larger project entirely. In exchange for stalling on my planned review, I am going to get right back down to business this week with Piper Kerman's 2010 memoir Orange is the New Black.
This bestselling memoir has been generating quite a bit of buzz, and for obvious reasons. Kerman, a relatively privileged woman of upper-middle-class standing and a Smith College alumna (which calls for a shout-out to Move Laugh Aloha -- not for being a convicted felon, but for also having graduated from Smith), recounts her experience being incarcerated for thirteen months on a drug charge she sustained in her "reckless" post-college years.
One of Kerman's main goals in publishing her story was to shed light on the many injustices doled out by our broken justice system and describe how awful the experience was for her and her fellow inmates. Few women have written at length about their prison experiences. For the most part, she recognizes that her unique state of privilege (including the love and full support of friends and family -- particularly an incredibly loyal fiance -- who visited regularly, as well as a stable, well-paying job waiting for her upon her release) made her experience markedly different from those of her peers. Her odds for recidivism were essentially nil, as opposed to the thousands of men and women who will spend their lives walking (or depending on how one sees it, being forced) through the "revolving door" between prison and the streets.
One issue I ran into while I read this memoir was that I was having a hard time connecting to and empathizing with Kerman. As I read, I thought a lot about how it would feel to be separated from my loved ones on indefinite terms for such a long time and to be constantly harassed and abused by prison guards with no way to defend myself. Obviously, I found these struggles to be unimaginable. But something about Kerman seemed detached in a way that was challenging to me as a reader; she does discuss in some detail her personal philosophy of stoicism, which I am sure bled into her writing and contributed to this perceived detachment in a large way. Still, I found that I was far more interested in learning about the lives of the women she bonded with behind bars than I was about her.
However, I tried to keep in mind what can be gained by reading the account from her perspective. When I discovered that she has devoted much of her post-prison life to social welfare and justice reform programs, I warmed up to her considerably. She is using her position and her megaphone to fight for reform that desperately needs to happen. I don't want to make a political statement of my own on the issue other than to say that all people, even prisoners, deserve to be treated like human beings. Prisoners not facing life sentences deserve access to resources that will help them adapt to life "on the outside" to protect them from falling into patterns that put them there in the first place. In these ways, Kerman's message aligns with my beliefs on the issue, and for that reason especially I can recommend this book to other readers.
She has taken a lot of flack among critics for the title of this book, which is odd at best and counterproductively flippant at worst. However, I consider it a wise choice if for no other reason than it is an attention-grabber, which was the obvious intended result. Cynics may say it was all about prescribing to a formula that would make her a bestseller, but I believe it was about drawing even more attention to the greater cause.
This memoir can be a quick and easy read, but I recommend that you take your time to absorb the stories of the women who have spent or are spending their lives in this or any prison. Kerman was incarcerated during the time that Martha Stewart was facing her own sentencing, an event which briefly made discussions of the quality of women's prisons en vogue. We all have our own beliefs about how celebrities receive preferential treatment under the law, and yes, I imagine that Stewart and the like could afford sterling legal representation that protected them from undue harm during their sentences. However, prison is still prison, and it is still ugly. It is unfair to millions of American inmates to paint a picture that is any rosier than the truth, a truth which I am moved by but still wholly unqualified to speak about in the level of detail that it deserves. Kerman's memoir brings readers face-to-face with a reality that often goes ignored by those of us who aren't directly impacted by it, although I wish it had gone even further.
Despite my few reservations about Kerman's narrative, I say that Orange is the New Black is worth the read. Have any of you read it yet? What did you think?
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