Introduction After being convicted for a crime that Piper Kerman committed 10 years before she was put into prison, she knew she was going to need help maintaining her fifteen months there. With yoga Janet by her side to help, her first roommates, and the security guys looking out for her. She would soon learn that she could protect and maintain her humanity.
Piper’s New Friends In the book Piper came across a lot of people that would be of help to her while in Federal prison. Annette was Kerman’s first ever prison roommate. Annette was very strict when it came to bed check, when Piper first showed up to Danbury Annette told her to not even bother to try to make the bed that she would just do it for her so that they could pass bed check. Another main friend that Kerman had was a Russian cook named Pop. Pop offered …show more content…
Also Kerman would consistently run throughout her time at Danbury and eventually joined Yoga Janet’s yoga class. Many people started to build a “camaraderie” while doing yoga. In yoga class, Yoga Janet taught Kerman to claim her inner peace and was Piper’s “guide on how to do [her] time without abandoning [herself],” (Kerman, 209). Kerman learned values such as grace and kindness through her Zen companion that allowed Kerman to spend her time in prison calmly and patiently till her time was up.
Prison Guards If Piper found her patience running thin she knew she could depend not only on her fellow prisoners, but also on a select few of the personnel at Danbury. At work one day, Kerman’s boss DeSimon used vulgar, offensive language towards Kerman. Kerman wrote a cop-out to DeSimon’s Texan boss. Upon reading and hearing of the situation, the boss promised to switch Kerman immediately from under DeSimon to a new position. When called upon, the staff at Danbury proved to be valuable allies and supported their inmates when necessary.