It feels almost ridiculous, at first, to be so emotionally undone by a hen, and yet, that is exactly what happened to me here. The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is an easy-to-understand fable about an egg-laying hen, Sprout, who longs to hatch a chick of her own—a book that sounds like it ought to be sweet. However, this short novella carries so much heart. It is also funny, strange, and quite ruthless at times. Again and again, she lays eggs while trapped within a battery cage, and her eggs are taken from her. Through a crack in the wire mesh, she can see other hens wandering through the grass with their chicks fussing and cheeping behind them: the life she wants so desperately and that has been denied to her.

When Sprout stops laying, she is no longer useful to the farmer and his wife. She is culled and thrown into a pile of dead hens while still alive. After a near-death encounter with the dreaded Weasel and help from her first friend, Sprout survives and finally finds freedom, but the barnyard she has watched for so long is not waiting to welcome her. They are suspicious and irritated by her, claiming their area for themselves, and not for the coop hen who has fled and refuses to return. And yet, Sprout keeps going purely because the dream that sustained her in the cage is still very much present. She still, so fiercely, wants a chick. 

Sprout had harboured a secret desire — to hatch an egg and watch the birth of her chick. But this was an impossible dream. The Coop was tilted forward so the eggs would roll to the other side of a barrier, separating them from their mothers.¹

So, when Sprout comes across an abandoned egg in the wilderness, with no mother returning for it, what else could she possibly do? Of course she sits on it. Sprout has been waiting all her life for a moment like this. But then, when the egg hatches, the chick is not a chick at all, but a duckling. She wanted a child, and the world gave her one who does not look like her, does not belong to the same species, and will eventually leave her. Yet, none of that lessens her love for him. 

As her duckling ‘Baby’ grows into Greentop, the ache of their differences becomes more obvious. He is hers, absolutely. And he is also, irreducibly, not hers. Sprout cannot swim or fly alongside him; she cannot fully prepare him for the life that awaits him. Instead, all she can do is hide him from the Weasel, who stalks them with horrific persistence, and give him the best possible life she can offer. 

A sprout grew into a leaf and embraced the wind and the sun before falling and rotting and turning into mulch for bringing fragrant flowers into bloom. Sprout wanted to do something with her life, just like the sprouts on the acacia tree.²

Sprout begins the novel by wanting an egg of her own; she then mothers a child who was never biologically hers, raising him towards a freedom she cannot share. For me, that is a large reason why so many people love this story. The fact that they are not biologically related, or even the same species, is a small bump in the road for Sprout. She never pauses to consider whether Baby is truly hers. She loved and guarded him when no other mother returned. That is enough for her. 

Hwang said that many readers assumed Sprout came from her own experience of motherhood, but that the character was actually rooted in her father, who died of cancer before the book was officially published in 2000. She chose a hen, she explained, because hens are ordinary creatures that rarely draw much attention. That ordinariness reminded her of her father: a poor, hard-working man whose life had known disappointment, but who remained warm and principled. That description is felt deeply with Sprout. She is ordinary to everyone on the farm, one hen among many, only useful while she lays eggs. Yet, the story begs us to notice the iridescence of her little life. She is a hen who cannot fly, raising a duck who must, and she loves persistently despite the hardships she endures.

Sprout’s thoughts were jumbled, but she was anything but ashamed. She had hatched her egg with all her being. She had wished for him to be born. She loved him when he was inside the egg. She was never suspicious about what was inside. Sure, he’s a duck, not a chick. Who cares? He still knows I’m his mum!³

I do think it is worth saying that the book’s brevity will not work for every reader. It lacks dense prose or elaborate world-building, and at times the storytelling feels very direct, almost as if it were something already being read aloud. Each stage of Sprout’s journey seems to move her further from the world she was made for and closer to the life she has chosen, even when that life is quite dangerous and lonely. I sometimes wanted the novella to linger longer on certain parts of the plot, especially the emotional bond between Sprout and her duckling as he grows. But it gives us just enough to love them. For me, this did not ruin the book, but it did leave a slight hunger in me for more. 

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is one of those books that can be read in one sitting and still leave you feeling quite bereaved afterwards. I do not think it is perfect, and I can see how its simplicity may feel too bare for some readers, but I found it incredibly moving. Its final act is so gut-wrenching because it stays faithful to Sprout’s character rather than to our readerly desire to protect her. She has always wanted to bring life into the world, to be a mother and to feel meaningful. By the end, she has done that, though not in the way she imagined, and she was happy with the life she had led. Sprout’s journey is heroic because it is so unadorned; she does not magically become more than a hen to matter, she matters just as she is.