Orange Is the New Black

roar. Then Sheena started to chant: “Al-ice, Al-ice, Al-ice, Al-ice, Al-ice!” as they led the little pacifist away. I had never seen prison guards look scared before.
    O NE HOT afternoon found me under a tree, trying to stay out of the sun. Along came Mrs. Jones, with Inky, her constant companion. I had finished her final paper, a pretty straightforward essay I had pieced together about the role that hybrid cars might play in the future economy. I had tried to pull some big ideas from
Managing in the Next Society
into my argument about knowledge-based economies, globalization, and the ways in which demographics change society. But itwas upsetting to think about what role the millions of Americans who were former prisoners might play in the next society—I knew from the Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) newsletters (which many prisoners received) that over 600,000 returned home from prison every year. The only markets most of them were accustomed to participating in were underground economies, and nothing about the prison system that I had seen showed them any other route to take when they hit the streets again. I could count on two hands the number of women in Danbury who had participated in a real vocational program—Pop, who had earned a food service certificate down at the FCI; Linda Vega, who worked as the Camp’s dental hygienist; and the handful of women who worked in Unicor. For the rest, maybe their work scrubbing prison floors or in the plumbing shop might translate toward a real job, but I was skeptical. There was no continuity at all between the prison economy, including prison jobs, and the mainstream economy.
    “Hey, Mrs. Jones! Did you get the paper back yet?”
    “I was just coming to talk to ya about that. I’m mad as hell!”
    I sat up, worried. Had she been busted? Maybe a disgruntled classmate had ratted her out? That wouldn’t shock me. “What’s wrong?”
    “We got an A-minus!”
    I laughed, which only made her more irritated.
    “What was the problem?” she wailed. “It was a great paper! I read it, just like I said I would!” She was very indignant.
    “Maybe he didn’t want you getting too cocky, Mrs. J. I think an A-minus is just great.”
    “Hmph. I don’t know what they’re thinking. Well, anyway, I wanted to say thank you. You’re a nice girl.” And with that she jerked Inky’s leash and marched off.
    A COUPLE months later she was marching again; all of the women who had completed the GED or college classes were honored in a ceremony held in the visiting room. Miss Natalie, Pennsatucky,Camila, and of course Mrs. Jones would be wearing mortarboards, along with a number of other women. Each graduate was allowed to invite a set number of guests from either the outside or the inside, and I would be attending as a guest of the OG.
    The valedictorian was Bobbie, who had scored the highest on the GED exam. Over the weeks leading up to the ceremony she agonized over her address, writing and rewriting it. The day dawned scorching hot, and the room was set up with two banks of chairs facing each other, graduates vs. guests. The women filed in solemnly, looking sharp in their caps and gowns—black for the GED students, bright blue for the collegians. There was a podium, where Bobbie would give her speech, but first we would have to hear from Warden Deboo. This would be her swan song; she was getting a brand-new prison in California to supervise, and we were getting a new warden, a guy from Florida.
    Bobbie gave a great speech. She had picked a theme—“We did IT!”—and was off and running, congratulating her fellow students for getting IT done, reminding all assembled that achieving a diploma was not easy in this setting but they had done IT, and proclaiming that now that everyone knew they could do IT, there was nothing else they couldn’t do, if they stuck with IT. And they each had a diploma to prove IT to the world. I was impressed by the care Bobbie had put into her words and by how well she delivered them, with just the right edge of defiance. The speech was brief, lean and mean, but firmly asserted that it was the graduates’ day to celebrate, not the institution’s. She spoke forcefully, naturally, and with pride.
    Afterward, the prisoners were allowed to have pictures taken. Against a fake cherry-tree backdrop in a corner of the visiting room, I stood with my friends, each of whom I was proud to know. Bobbie, posing with a group of us clustered