THE CHICKEN CHRONICLES
By Alice Walker
Ms. Hen found this book by chance in a bookstore in Washington
D.C. called Busboys and Poets. She knew it was destiny because it has a
chicken on the cover that looks just like her. She read the first few pages and
decided to buy it.
This memoir is about Alice Walker’s experience owning and
taking care of chickens in her home in Northern California. She had always
wanted chickens, but then she saw a chicken and her brood crossing the road and
she was enraptured. She thought she had never seen a chicken so beautiful
before, even though she had been raised in the South and had chickens when she was
young.
Ms. Walker acquired some chickens and she grew to love them.
She would watch them and they would bring her joy. The chickens all had names:
Glorious, Rufus, Gertrude Stein, Splendor, Hortensia, Agnes of God, the
Gladyses and Babe. She loved them like her children. She is a vegetarian and
every time she ate chicken by mistake she felt ashamed and guilty.
The chickens brought back her memories of her childhood. She
remembered her mother’s thumb that appeared disfigured. She remembered going to
church on Sunday and seeing her mother all dressed up. She remembered her
siblings and other members of the family leaving home, and how she felt sad
when they left. The chickens helped her remember what it was like to be young
and how she felt as a child. The chickens did many things.
Ms. Walker traveled a lot to India and Nepal while she was
taking care of the chickens. Some chapters of the book are letter to the
chickens, who she calls her girls, telling them about the things she saw and
did when she traveled.
Ms. Hen thought it was strange that Ms. Walker wrote letters
to her chickens. Ms. Hen is strange, so she understood this. It’s like Ms. Hen
having opinions of things. She does it to make herself feel better. People have
to do what they can to survive, and if Alice Walker thinks it’s okay to write
letters to her chickens to tell them about India, Ms. Hen is fine with that.
Ms. Hen is a strange hen, and she admires people and chickens that can go out
on a limb and be different.
Ms. Hen can’t stand people and things that are normal. She
thinks that nobody is normal, but some people can’t help but try to fit in.
When she’s an old hen, she wants to be as strange as Alice Walker and maybe
write letters to chickens from Nepal or somewhere else that’s just as exciting.
She doesn’t want to sit on her couch and watch soap operas and worry about game
shows and celebrities.
When Ms. Hen is an old hen, she wants to be able to write a
book as beautiful as this one. It’s small and could be a fast read, but it
should not be read too quickly. It should be savored like a good cup of coffee,
drinking every last drop to experience the taste and beauty of the whole thing.
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