Orange Is The New Black

Greenwich Library
Cole Auditorium
101 W. Putnam Avenue
Thursday, May 13, 2010
7:00pm

PIPER KERMAN
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK: MY YEAR IN A WOMEN’S PRISON

Free and Open to the Public

Author Talk & Book Signing

Greenwich Library and Just Books welcome author and Smith College graduate Piper Kerman as she talks about her book Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.  Kerman spent a year at the minimum security correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, for a drug smuggling and money laundering scheme she got tangled up in 10 years earlier when she had just graduated from Smith College, Kerman, at 34, was a self-surrender at the prison: quickly she had to learn the endless rules, like frequent humiliating strip searches and head counts; navigate relationships with the other campers and unnerving guards; and concoct ways to fill the endless days by working as an electrician and running on the track. She was not a typical prisoner, as she was white, blue-eyed, and blonde (nicknamed the All-American Girl), well educated, and the lucky recipient of literature daily from her fiancé.  Her story chronicles her daily life in the prison, the friends she made, many street-hardened drug users with little education and facing much longer sentences.  This is a revealing and moving story taken from a unique perspective on the criminal justice system.