48 pages • 1 hour read
K.J. Dell'AntoniaThe Chicken Sisters
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary: “Mae”
Even though the video about Barbara’s house has spread, Mimi’s is still relatively busy, and the pies are almost gone by the end of the night due to Mae’s sign that claims they were all baked at Kenneth’s coffee shop. When Mae talks to Sabrina, Sabrina tells her that Barbara will have to do something about her house even if they drop out of Food Wars because dog protestors will have her dogs taken away. Sabrina tells Mae that she must fix up her mother’s house if she wants Barbara to be left alone. Barbara asks Mae what they have to do for Sabrina to give them a chance at winning, and Mae reveals that they must clean her house. During this conversation, Barbara reveals that she has Parkinson’s disease, which causes her to tremble and has affected her sense of smell. Mae realizes that it would be better if she lived closer to her mom, and Barbara reveals that Amanda does not know about her diagnosis, either. Barbara cries and worries that Mimi’s will not survive the next generation due to an expensive mortgage and inheritance taxes. She claims that this is why Amanda’s father-in-law wanted to buy Mimi’s and her house. Mae says they will figure it out, but in the meantime, they need to clean.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Amanda”
Amanda claims “the night went down-hill after Nancy left” (241). The staff avoids the camera crew, and her kids do not speak to her on the way home. They read through comments on the Facebook video about how Barbara should have her dogs taken away. Amanda tries to reassure herself that she did the right thing.
The next morning, she wakes up to text messages from Nancy saying that she will be at Barbara’s house helping them clean up and that Amanda should be there as well. Arriving at her mother’s house, she finds that half of her mother’s belongings are on the lawn and that many community members have come to help her clean. Barbara sees Amanda and tells her to go start cleaning up her old room. Amanda gets angry, and she tells the camera crew that her mother’s house is disgusting and that she “left the minute [she] could” (248). She claims her mother will never change and that the dogs may die within six months. Mae and Amanda get into an argument in front of the cameras, and Mae tells her to leave. Mae announces that she will be staying in Kansas to help her mom as Amanda begins to leave the house. On her way out, Amanda realizes Jay has arrived.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Mae”
Mae sees Jay and runs to him while trying to forget her argument with Amanda. She realizes as she hugs Jay that she wants him to stay in Kansas with her so that she can help care for her mother. She finally tells Jay about her mother’s hoarding, and she realizes that he acknowledges her family’s pain. Madison pulls on Jay to show him the puppies, and Mae gives him a hug and tells him she has been missing him. He tells her that he will hang out with their kids before coming to help her clean Barbara’s house. They decide that after they clean, they will talk.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Amanda”
Amanda walks down the path to the river, and Nancy follows her to the tree stump. Amanda breaks down crying, fearing she has “ruined everything.” Amanda feels like Mae is her “problem.” She feels that Mae has used her mother’s house as an opportunity for social media content, but Nancy reveals that she was the one who posted on Kenneth’s Facebook page for help to clean up Barbara’s house. Nancy also tells her that Sabrina is the root cause of the problem.
Sabrina shows Amanda a video of several community members, including employees of Frannie’s and Mimi’s, claiming that Amanda would never steal Mimi’s chicken recipe. Nancy realizes why the chicken recipes taste the same, and she takes Amanda to Frannie’s—without Sabrina—to show her an old fried chicken recipe that she started using.
As they talk, Amanda shares that she does not want to work at Frannie’s anymore. Nancy tells Amanda that it is okay for her to move on and date other people, despite how much she loved her husband.
On the back of the recipe, there is a note from Mimi to Frannie wishing her luck with her restaurant, with a reference to giving her a loan to start the restaurant. The note also implies that Frannie and Mimi parted ways due to differences between Frannie’s husband and Mimi, rather than between the sisters. Under the note, Frannie had written that she owes Mimi $1,400. Amanda asks Nancy how she got the recipe. Nancy claims that Gus knew where it was and showed it to her, but before then, she had simply guessed which spices she needed to use. Amanda and Nancy also conclude that Frannie owed Mimi money and that the men in Frannie’s family simply ignored this. Nancy gives Amanda the recipe.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Mae”
Sabrina has Mae focus on cleaning the living room, since it is nearly impossible to clean the entire house in one day. After they finish filming, Mae goes to find Jay, but she runs into Frankie, who tells her she did a good job. When Mae finds Jay, he tells her that knowing about her hometown and Barbara’s house would not have made any difference in his feelings for her. She also reveals that she put herself through college by stripping. They decide that while Mae needs to stay there for her mother, they will not fret over the future. Mae then receives a call from Lolly, who claims the producers of Sparkling saw the Facebook live video of her cleaning her mother’s house and want her back on the show. She turns down the offer.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
This set of chapters functions as the climax of the story as the characters begin to voice their frustrations with each other. This causes an explosive fight between Mae and Amanda, but once they voice their concerns and emotions, they are able to move forward. Amanda’s resentment toward Barbara resides in her belief that Barbara “was as glad to see [her] go as [she] was to leave” after her marriage to Frank, but Amanda also acknowledges that she had “pushed out of her mind” Barbara’s support after his death (248). This highlights the complexity of her feelings toward Barbara and Mae, which are rooted in her grief and feeling as though she has been cast aside by her own family. When she and Mae get into their fight, Amanda can express these emotions even if Barbara and Mae feel otherwise; this allows them to acknowledge how they have all played a role in the dismantling of their relationships. However, by speaking their truth, they are able to move on from the past, which aligns metaphorically with the cleaning of Barbara’s house.
At first, Mae’s decision to help her mother clean her house appears to be for selfish reasons to help promote her own brand, similar to her offer to clean Amanda’s kitchen earlier in the narrative. However, the process of cleaning Barbara’s house helps her not only understand her mother more, but also to reconcile with her own emotions about it:
But that didn’t mean some part of Mae didn’t share Amanda’s resentment, or that she didn’t still wish that Barbara, so strong in so many ways, could have just gotten her act together on this one. She had spent too long keeping those feelings tucked away all neat and clean inside (257).
Mae realizes during this process that she has more in common with Amanda than she previously understood, which allows them to find common ground despite their anger toward each other. While Mae’s focus on her own emotions appears to be selfish in nature, her ability to align herself with Amanda and be truthful about how they both regard their mother allows time for reflection and clarity. By unraveling her own emotions, Mae works toward healing and figuratively cleaning out these emotions by reconciling with them, which ultimately allows her to mend her relationship with Barbara, furthering the theme of Family Feuds and Reconciliation. The act of having the entire family, and even the town of Merinac, come together to support Barbara allows them to start to close the emotional and physical gaps that have kept the families apart.
As the novel progresses, the decision to include the support of community members broadens the narrative from the sisters’ perspectives to that of an outside audience. The viewers of Food Wars, therefore, take on a role within the narratives of the contestants and how they view themselves, perpetuating the theme of The Influence of Reality Television on Personal Narratives. Sabrina’s video of several community members defending Amanda shows that “[faces] flashed quickly by, all shaking their heads or scoffing at something” (263). Although Sabrina attempts to dismantle Amanda’s defense of not having stolen the fried chicken recipe, the town’s willingness to come together to defend her innocence illustrates their ability to transcend the influence of Food Wars and stand their ground. Even further, the town of Merinac also illustrates how loyal the community members are not to just one restaurant but to both, suggesting that the “rivalry” between them is not perceived as such by their patrons. This section thus expands upon the ways that Food Wars affects more than just the restauranteurs, but also impacts the people who know and love them.
