This review originally appeared on the book review blog: justonemorepaige.wordpress.com.

I went into the audiobook section of the library planning on borrowing something completely different and then I saw this. Since the popular explosion of the Netflix interpretation of this memoir a few years ago, it has (obviously) been on my radar. But it's not something I was interested enough in to try watching or to jump to the top of my TBR list. However, seeing it in audiobook form was exactly the option I needed to make it happen. I see audiobooks (listening to them in my car) as a kind of "bonus" reading. Driving, for me, is like dead time...the recent-ish discovery of using that time for audiobooks has been exciting and liberating. I like driving more than I ever have before AND I've decided to use that time for books or genres that I'd be slow to get to otherwise. Win-win. I think. In any case, I decided this was the perfect time/way to see what all the OITNB fuss was about.

This book wasn't at all what I expected it would be. To be fair, I don't know what I expected, exactly, but it was not the combination of violent nightmare situations and loud railing against the system that I had anticipated. That's not to say that there was no horror in the situation, nor that there was no commentary on the state of this country's prison system, but it was so much more than either of those things. This book was, at heart, a story of people. This is a story of the connections and relationships that form, even in the most difficult of circumstances. And this is a story of women who choose to help each other when there is no one else that will. 

The writing felt a little choppy to me, like a series of short vignettes. This may be due in part to the fact that, while listening, you cannot see the section or chapter breaks that create those natural pauses, but it actually didn't matter. I thought that style was perfect for this type of memoir. I mean, the plot is essentially pre-known and non-existent, we know Piper goes to jail and spends a year there and then gets out, so really all she has to tell are those snippets that allow us to get a feel for her experience. Plus, it allows her to tell us the important things about the people she met and got to be friends with, as well as those she didn't know as well, by focusing solely on the "big" stories or things she found worth telling. In this way, she was able to jump from one to another of those, without needing to spend time on the less compelling (read: boring and monotonous) in between times. And I can see how that helped this become such a Netflix hit - it's perfect for an episode based retelling.

Going in, and throughout the story, it's obvious how privileged Piper is - with her own lawyer, access to money in her prison account essentially right away, many visitors, lots of people writing her letters and sending in books, countless other outside resources, and the fact that she's young, white, and doesn't look like she belongs in prison. She does a good job relaying the depth of her privilege, comparatively, which allows us as readers to really see a few things: how difficult prison can be even with all those privileges and how much worse it is without them. But even more than that, we see the grace of those around her - saving her, teaching her, protecting her, picking her up when she needs it and allowing her to do the same for them. For all that Piper heard advice to "not make friends" while inside, this is essentially a story about how the only way to survive is to make friends. And that power of humanity to survive and flourish is something worth celebrating.

I respected the way she wrote about things matter of fact-ly, with little (or at least it seemed liked little while I was listening) embellishment or editorializing. This did two things, in my opinion. First, it meant that the few spots where she did editorialize held that much more weight. Second, it really gave credence to our interpretation of her experience. By not giving too much commentary or speculation on things outside her own experience, by not writing a book with the goal of "burning the system at the stake" and rubbing that in the face of the reader, the feelings we come away with about how broken the system really is are that much stronger. She didn't have to, or shouldn't have to, embellish in order for the reader to realize how wrong things are.

This was one of my favorite books (for a few reasons, though nothing major or pointed), but I will say that it's a peek at a life that I have never really heard or known anything about. And I appreciated the chance to learn and see into a sub-culture/civilization that is rarely given the light of day (in many ways). And to that end, I would recommend it.

Note about the audiobook: I hated the narrator. Her voice was a ridiculous combination of nasal, drawl, and condescension. And though some of her accents were fine, some were so bad they made me cringe. I would have much preferred to read the dialogue so I could hear it in my head the way it's supposed to sound. Ugh.


Last, I would like to list the few big takeaways that I had, because that, I feel, was the most important piece of this story and it's message. However, this also stems from my background in public health and may not appeal to everyone, so I saved it for the end, so you could choose to read it or not:

- The biggest one is, really, what a joke of a situation, overall. Piper's offense was years ago - she went to prison 10 years after the crime was committed. It was required to because of the minimum sentencing around drug crimes that is supposed to be helping in the "war on drugs." I'm absolutely not saying she doesn't deserve some kind of "punishment" for her crime, but honestly, what is sending a non-violent offender to prison years later doing for anyone? Piper said that the only thing she felt bad about going into prison was how much stress it was causing herself and her family. It took seeing the effects of drugs on the lives of some of the women she was incarcerated with to actually make her regret her actions all those years ago and put a face on the suffering she played a small part in causing. For her and for the many like her, there are so many better options. What about giving her a buttload of community service hours, requiring her to work directly with the people who her actions affected? It would be better for communities who need that type of "in kind" assistance, for families who could then stay together, cheaper for everyone (less tax dollars spent on those in prison, among other things), and much more likely to both teach the offender a "lesson" and encourage actual change in their lifestyle. We need to cultivate systems of restorative justice, not this, as Piper called it, arms length retribution.

- I want to go work in a prison now. Or at least, somehow, help to make it a place people wouldn't hate to work. There are so many people shunted there who don't want to be there. And that's unfair both to them and, especially, to the many inmates, who are people and unequivocally deserve to be treated as such. Piper said many times that no one who worked in the system cared, not for their job, not for the prisoners, not really, it seemed, about anything she could see. And that makes me deeply sad.

- The educational opportunities for those in prison are abysmal. This is often a population that would benefit greatly, and in turn benefit society, if they had access to that. It's a perfect opportunity, and one that I think is supposed to be in place, but, clearly, rarely is. And while I mean that regarding GED and college credit classes, I mean it in a more basic sense as well. Piper talked about this a little, but I feel it's worth harping on a bit. We cannot expect to put women (or any person) in such an infantilizing, isolating, and unrealistic situation as prison for years and then expect them, with no help or guidance, to "make it" upon their release. The release education sessions that are required gave no actual or useful information on how to find housing, or a job, or healthcare, accessible to women in their situation. When your "housing education" is given by a staff member in construction, whose knowledge is based in how to build a house and talks about the best roofing options, how can we expect that to help women know where to go to find an affordable place to live, and one that will allow them to live there, after release? It's a travesty. We're the ones that have made it impossible and it needs to start with us to address it.

- We, on the "outs," make so many judgments about others that we don't understand. We do not know how a person ended up in prison, what their circumstances were, and we should provide everyone with the second, or even third, chance that you know we would hope they'd extend to us in the reverse.

- I read a lot of criticism of Piper for getting out and writing a book about the experience "to make a buck" or something, but essentially returning to her old life and doing nothing to help fix the issues with the broken system she experienced firsthand. Well, I actually have done no research on this so I don't know if she has done anything or not, but she's not required to do anything. Would it be nice because she has a platform now? Sure. But how many of us have seen or experienced something terrible that we could work to fix and have done nothing about it? How many of us have traveled to a developing country and seen the poverty there (or, let's be real, seen it in our own countries), and moved on without attempting to do anything about it? And I'm sure many of us have a platform we could use for change. So instead of criticizing and throwing stones, let's instead (and pardon my cliche and cheesiness here) be the change we wish to see in the world ourselves.