Piper's Struggle In Orange Is The New Black

In Piper Kerman’s novel, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women 's Prison, the reader gets to unravel the failed, upturned life of a Ms. Piper Kerman, who ended up in prison for a year for smuggling money a gang earned from selling drugs into Europe. Piper was a graduate from Smith college, but felt her life remained jaded and wanted some adventure in it, which lead her to meet a woman named Nora. She promised Piper that she would have her by her side for her trip all over the globe. Nora worked as an African drug dealer that made cargos of money. She decided to have Piper along to prevent herself from becoming lonesome. During this trip, at one of their stops, Nora gave Piper a bag of money that she was told to take with her as she traveled

She then learns the truth about her ex-friend, Nora, and the group she was involved in that where smuggling drugs and Nora explained that Piper was an “accomplice”, during the court proceedings. After a 5-year exceedingly complicated trial, Piper was sentenced to 15 months in a women’s penitentiary, which is where the journey truly begins. Throughout her time in prison, she gradually learns how to deal with, observe, and survive the prison system, while getting a trivial job, finding ways to maintain her rationality, and creating a few bonds with some of the female inmates along the way. She gained a plentiful amount of knowledge during her 13 months there (out of the 15-month sentence), such as keeping busy with a job and doing activities, while staying in the guard’s “good graces”, but, ultimately, she begins to realize that, like herself, the prisoners were caught up in this abnormal criminal system. As she begins to complete her sentence, she is brought back into the courtroom to testify another gang member that was involved in this debacle that landed her in prison in the first place. After explaining to the court that she did not recognize the person she was asked about, she asks to not be relocated to another prison in Chicago, but her request is denied. In this unaccustomed, ghastly jail, she comes face to face with Nora, where she