The Women of Jenji Kohan with Dani Bethea and Sydney Urbanek

Pop Literacy

The writer-producer Jenji Kohan has given us some of the best depictions of women on television. Nancy Botwin of Weeds followed a Breaking Bad-like path from suburban widow to druglord. The diverse cast of Orange Is the New Black revolutionized TV with not one, but dozens, of empathetic, flawed, fascinating characters. And GLOW, which followed a scrappy women’s wrestling operation, gave us a women’s sports show unlike any other.

The essay collection The Women of Jenji Kohan, edited by Scarlett Harris, captures all of the complexity of Kohan’s work, with both admiration and warranted criticism. In this episode, we speak to two of the collection’s contributors: Dani Bethea, who wrote about Orange Is the New Black’s depictions of violence against Black women; and Sydney Urbanek, who wrote about Nancy Botwin’s inability to be “cured” of her demons on Weeds.

Read more:

• The Women of Jenji Kohan, edited by Scarlett Harris

Pop Literacy recommends:

• Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ‘80s Hard Rock Explosion by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock
• Hello, Molly!: A Memoir by Molly Shannon

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