When I announced my intentions to raise a few pet chickens, someone recommended this book to me.  It's taken almost a year to get around to it, but I finally finished this classic memoir published in 1945 by Betty MacDonald, better known to many people as the author of the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books.  

(I was also surprised to learn that this book is the source of all the Ma and Pa Kettle films.  Which I was surprised to learn were films, because I always thought "Ma and Pa Kettle" was just a random name to denote hillbilly-ness, like "Cletus" or something.  I didn't know it was a real thing, in other words.)

Betty MacDonald married a man named Bob, who had a dream of owning his own chicken ranch.  Not long after their marriage, Bob purchased a farm on the Olympic Peninsula, and Betty - always a city girl up until that point - tagged along for the ride.

I enjoyed The Egg and I a lot, when it wasn't horrifying me with its (historically accurate) propagation of the deeply entrenched and institutionalized racism and sexism of the day.  MacDonald tries to make light of the fact that she literally works twice as hard as her husband, because she has to help with the farm chores, but he wouldn't dream of helping with the house work.  But every time she tries to make light of it, you can practically hear her saying it through clenched teeth.

Then MacDonald turns around and lets loose with an extended riff on how the Native Americans of the Olympic Peninsula are, and I quote directly, "squat, bowlegged, swarthy, flat-faced, broad-nosed, dirty, diseased, ignorant and tricky."  And naturally, they are always drunk.

I happen to live on tribal land (although I'm just a regular old white girl; it's leased property) belonging to a coastal tribe, the Swinomish.  I felt really bad for reading this book, and I would be horrified if someone had happened to spot me at it.  I almost wish that MacDonald's heirs had purged her racist rants from the text, but I suppose that would be a form of dishonesty, so maybe it's better that they didn't.

Betty and Bob have  a hard time out there on the coast.  Is it churlish of me to point out that, for a book titled The Egg and I, there's very little in it about the chickens themselves?  I was hoping for more about the chickens.  Chickens are pretty funny, and I'm surprised they don't get more screen time.  At any rate, the book is hilarious enough to stand on its own (even without the desired extra chicken content).  MacDonald's writing sparkles, her eye for a good story is impeccable, and she describes everything with vivid clarity.

One thing not mentioned in the book or in its forward by MacDonald's heirs is that Betty divorced Bob and moved back to the city, not long after the close of the book.  I have to say, even though divorce is always sad, I felt rather proud of her when I learned that she had finally given Bob the boot and taken up the reins of her own life again.