Ever since DePauw University announced that Piper Kerman was coming to campus, there was a certain buzz and excitement that persisted up until her arrival. I mean who didn’t know or watch the show Orange is the New Black, the raunchy comedy-drama about a woman removed from the comfort of her New York life and sentenced to fifteen months in prison, on Netflix. When season two of the show came on during the summer, I locked myself in my room with some food and didn’t come out until I had finished all thirteen episodes.
On the third day I cried as I realized I was on the last episode. As the real life Piper Chapman (aka Piper Kerman) walked on to the stage at DePauw University on February 4, 2015, everyone was sitting on the edge of their seats not knowing what to expect. Kerman began by speaking of her humble roots in Boston and how she attended Smith College, an all women’s institution. Kerman then described the feeling of not knowing what was next after she graduated from college. This was a feeling we all could connect to, all of us were in college but what happens after that, and do we really know what we want to do? As Kerman tried to answer this question, she found herself in places such as Bali with her then girlfriend who dealt heroin. Kerman found herself in the middle of crime and eventually participated in laundering money.
In 2004, Kerman began her 15-month sentence, eventually only serving thirteen, in Danbury, Connecticut. Throughout her speech, Kerman lead us along her journey, occasionally cracking a joke or two about her then fiancé Larry being the “hero of the story” or how she knew a girl named Pom-Pom who wore a rendition of Crazy Eyes’ hairstyle way before she owned it. However, I believe the most captivating part of this story, and what Piper Kerman wanted us to take out of it, was that all of these women were human and they simply ended up on the wrong side of the track, but through prison she learned to care about them, some are still her friend today.
The inspiring part of Kerman’s story was what she made out of it. Prison never seems like a positive experience but Kerman made her experience into just that. Instead of just going to prison, coming out and going along with her life, she now serves on the board of the Women’s Prison Association and is an advocate of bringing about awareness and representing women in prisons. Kerman witnessed many injustices against women in prison, in which she spoke briefly on during her presentation, issues that speak on the power structure in prison to race. Kerman stated that if she could go back and do it all over again that she would not, she realized that this time in prison did not only effect her but also her family, however Kerman shows us that even from a devastating situation, it is what you do after that truly matters.