It was also clear that there was racial bias built into the criminal justice system, as women of color tended to have disproportionately harsher sentences than white inmates who’d committed similar offenses. She was baffled by the seeming randomness of different inmate sentences, as women convicted of similar offenses often received wildly divergent punishments. In conversations with other women, Piper saw that they freely discussed one another’s lengths of imprisonment. This, Piper learned, was a ritual performed by all the racial groups at Danbury with new arrivals. She saw the racial solidarity during her first days at camp, when a series of white inmates gifted Piper various provisions from the commissary, because they knew that she didn’t yet have the money to purchase anything. The prison officials reinforced this 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). In these early days of her prison sentence, most of Piper’s friends were white, predominantly Italian-American. Segregation was the unwritten rule behind bars-although there were some exceptions, most people hung out in racially homogenous groups, with little intermingling across racial lines. One of the things that first struck Piper was how much race determined and defined the culture at Danbury. Read about these themes and consider Piper’s experiences. These Orange Is the New Black themes talk about major ideas Piper considers during her time in prison.

Piper’s experience and observations help form these themes.Ĭheck out the following Orange Is the New Black themes. These six Orange Is the New Black themes help explain major issues in the book and why they matter. What are the most important Orange Is the New Black themes? What do they mean? Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading. This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of 'Orange Is The New Black' by Piper Kerman.

Orange is the new black book