Female inmates on Rikers Island did triple-takes on Monday when they
saw “Orange is the New Black” star Danielle Brooks walking the
jailhouse’s corridors.
“It's strange being here,” Brooks told one source on the scene. “For
half the year, this is my fictional world. But I've never been to a real
prison.”
The Julliard-trained actress, who plays “Taystee” Jefferson on the hit Netflix show, was at the Rose M. Singer Center — which is technically a jail — to meet with members of the facility's first book club as part of the Mayor's One Book program.
Brooks told women who gathered in “Rosie's” new library, “It's
important to remind people that you are daughters and mothers and
sisters — to
not just look at you as criminals. You have a story. And we (on the
show) are doing our damndest to tell that story as authentically as we
know how. You are not forgotten!”
Brooks read from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah,” the One Book
title that New Yorkers, including the inmate, have been reading. Brooks
and Media and Entertainment Commissioner Julie Menin, who launched the
initiative, then engaged in a lively discussion about race, identity and
pressures to conform.
One woman recalled how she'd once tried to hide her South Carolina accent.
“You're from South Carolina?” asked Brooks, slapping the inmate a high-five. “Girl, so am I!”
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