More thoughts on Orange is the New Black

 

Season 2 of Orange is the New Black offers up plenty of twists, revelations, and conflicts to keep fans busy, but it also provides some nice narrative food for thought.  Today, I want to examine two characters and how race and culture are at play to create different results in similar scenarios.  (Again, a disclaimer:  I’ll be getting into season 2 stuff, especially flashback info from episodes 2 and 3.)

 

We found out last season that Suzanne (a.k.a. Crazy Eyes) is the daughter of two well-to-do-looking white parents, with the obvious implication that she was adopted.  Similarly, Taystee has a line in season 1 about having been a ward of the state until adolescence.  The new episodes give us more information about both of their backgrounds, paying special attention to their experience with adoption or lack thereof.

 

Taystee’s story is sad but undeniably familiar.  It’s unclear how old she was when she was first put up for adoption, but at some point she clearly aged out of a desirably adoptable age.  The smart, spirited girl grows up in group homes, being passed over for those younger, lighter-skinned, straighter-haired, and less forceful.  Her yearning for a “forever family” makes her a prime target for Vee, an opportunistic drug dealer.  Like Fagin before her, Vee preys on cast-off children, grooming them to work for her and offering them the parental figure they’re missing in their lives. 

 

Superficially, Suzanne’s situation appears far better than Taystee’s.  She’s adopted into a well-off, loving family at a young age, raised in suburban comfort.  However, Suzanne’s upbringing has left scars as well.  Her well-intentioned mother loves her dearly and fights tooth and nail for her happiness and inclusion, but Suzanne remains an outsider in her own community.  She grows up among white people (probably exclusively, or nearly so,) where no one quite understands her.  Even something as simple as her hair – when she’s young, her parents leave it large and wild, presumably because they don’t really know what to do with a black girl’s hair.  It’s not until her baby sister is born that it’s first styled, a treat from a black nurse who manages Suzanne with an ease her own mother never achieves.

 

So, in a way, Suzanne is looking for family, too.  Taystee makes friends in prison easily; there’s a common vernacular and cultural bond, and she fits in seamlessly.  Meanwhile, Suzanne struggles to find her place.  In Litchfield, prisoners live according to a “tribal” system in which they mainly associate with members of their own race.  Granted, we don’t know much about what her adult pre-prison life was like, but it seems Suzanne has had limited time socializing with other black people.  I wonder if she was excited when she first discovered a black community at Litchfield, if she finally felt like she belonged somewhere. 

 

But here, too, Suzanne is out of place.  With her Standard American English diction, privileged background, and love of Shakespeare and figure skating, she doesn’t have the shared experience that binds together many of the black inmates, and they tolerate her without really accepting her.  (Note:  Suzanne’s clear but unspecified mental health issues definitely have something to do with it as well – the others tend to treat her more like a “special” mascot than anything else.)  When Vee returns to Litchfield, it’s no wonder she quickly recognizes Suzanne as an easy mark.