Ms. Hen reviews ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK and cherishes her freedom

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, MY YEAR IN A WOMEN’S PRISON

by Piper Kerman

Since Ms. Hen is a cool kid, she’s watched the Netflix TV show ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK. She loves watching a show about women who are locked up because it forces her to look at her own life with more appreciation. The show is violent and brims with tension. Ms. Hen is an avid reader, so she decided she would read the memoir. It differs from the TV show.

At first, Ms. Hen noticed how bland the writing is in the book. The real Piper was not a literature major at Smith; she was a theater major. Reading this is not at all like reading Tolstoy or Jeanette Winterson. But Ms. Hen kept reading because she wanted to discover how similar the book is to the TV show.

In the book, there are too many characters and any reader, including a hen, would get confused. The characters on the TV show are composites of the ones in the book; the reader can recognize pieces of characters in all the different women.

The TV show has more violence and tension than the memoir, and the show is written better. In the book, Piper discovers what it means to live in the moment at all times and to try to learn to make the best out of every situation. She looks for the good in every day, which is a useful survival tool for anyone. She made great friendships with the women with whom she was incarcerated and discovered that she had a lot to give. She learned in prison that she was not the bad girl she wanted to be, but a good girl.

Ms. Hen was disappointed that the chicken episode had nothing to do with the book. In the episode, a chicken runs around the prison that the cook Red wants to catch. She says that she wants to eat the chicken because it’s so smart she wants to absorb its intelligence. Ms. Hen is a very smart hen and she knows that Red would want to eat her, too, if she were real.

Even though Ms. Hen thinks ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK is not the best book she’s ever read in her life, she was reminded of how precious and fragile freedom can be. Anyone who’s been locked up should know how to appreciate life and the small things, like a hen purse or a cup of good coffee. All the little things should matter to everyone, because it's the details that make life so colorful.