Books are necessary to the feel of on a regular basis life in Orange Is the New Black, which relies on a memoir and just lately concluded after seven seasons. On the present, the Litchfield inmates use books for info, for solace, and for killing of time.
Books are additionally necessary in real-life prisons; you possibly can donate books requested by inmates by their want lists. As an nameless E book Riot contributor experiencing incarceration has written:
“Books…have been the few rays of sunshine I noticed when locked down for 22 hours a day in a two-man six-by-eight foot cell. I can not correctly categorical…the glow of hope that comes from getting into a small jail library to scoop up 4 donated books to fill the hours different spend yelling about sports activities, crimes (previous and deliberate), and ladies.”
But jail directors generally limit the studying materials that may be introduced in. This contains banning materials that incorporates sexually specific passages or descriptions of criminality, limiting deliveries to these from licensed distributors, stopping the entry of books that discover civil rights and race relations, and imposing different arbitrary and unexplained limits.
Orange Is the New Black characters spend a great deal of their time studying; E book Riot has rounded up a few of their guide alternatives for Season 5 and Season 6. Understandably, nonetheless, the writers are reluctant to commit an excessive amount of time to scenes of ladies mendacity on their bunks and studying. It’s laborious for a lot drama (or comedy) to ensue this manner.
One workaround is utilizing books and libraries as settings or plot factors to precipitate drama or clarify motivations. Right here’s a listing of among the many bookish issues Orange characters try this aren’t precisely studying books.
Warning: spoilers abound, though no characters are named.
Bookish Occasions
Pen sci-fi erotica that’s fought overBurn books in an effort to rid the jail of bedbugs, after one of many critters is discovered inside a bookTurn beloved books right into a dreamy hanging set up in tribute to a girlfriend who’s been killed by a guardBe catapulted into an emotional flashback on the point out of Calvin and HobbesCluelessly deal with a jail stint as an opportunity to learn by way of a whole Amazon wishlistHost a memorial to stated burned books, together with these written by “the Jonathans” (Franzen, Swift, Lethem, Tropper, Kellerman, and Livingston Seagull)Commerce contraband telephone chargers hidden inside books
Library Shenanigans
Use the library as an workplace to run a drug-smuggling empireHave an emotional confrontation and reconciliation within the libraryOverdose on antihistamines within the libraryHave indignant intercourse within the libraryUse a library cart to distribute a nonfiction account of trauma to a selected personMock archetypal white ladies whereas working within the library, resulting in the beginning of a lovely friendshipTake observe GED testsFight with jail directors about together with 50 Shades of Gray within the library
Knowledge from Books
Reference the surreal lure of Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor for jail lifeUse Freakonomics to elucidate trigger and impact, in an effort to caustically console a non secular girl feeling responsible about an abortion: “My level is that you just have been a meth-head, white-trash piece of shit, and your kids, had they been born, would have been meth-head, white-trash items of shit. So by terminating these pregnancies, you spared society the scourge of your offspring. I imply, when you concentrate on it, it’s a blessing.”Reference the Talmud and the Torah to indicate a conversion to JudaismQuote A Scanner Darkly to justify paranoia
To learn the work of incarcerated writers, there’s no scarcity of nonfiction books, poems, and different forms of writing.
