The Chicken Chronicles: A Memoir by Alice Walker, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $35.
Hatched as a blog and raised by her agent into a book, Alice Walker’s (of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple fame) The Chicken Chronicles, is both a practical day-in-the-yard guide to caring for her “girls” — bullied Gertrude Stein, rebellious Hortensia and sensuous Glorious, to name a few of her cosseted chooks — yet also a moving voyage into the mind-set of gentle, earth-loving “Mommy” Alice, whose job on a Sunday as a little girl in the Deep South of America was to chase down dinner and wring its neck.
On her farm in San Francisco, Alice, sitting on an old green stool, warms her chilly hands under the wings of her beloved swooning babes, watches them do the “funky chicken dance” scratching for bugs with their powerful legs and delights in them recognising her voice.
Michael Jackson, the Dalai Lama and her own mother all, too, have a place on her storytelling lap, heroes to be woven into majestic realisations about maternal nurturing and Mother Nature. Quirky, but captivating.
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