"Pulitzer-Winning Graphic Novel 'Feeding Ghosts' Receives Surprisingly Little Attention"

The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls, published by MCD in 2024, has been honored with the Pulitzer Prize, as announced on May 5. This accolade marks a significant achievement, as it is only the second graphic novel to win a Pulitzer, following Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1992. Unlike Maus, which won a Special Award, Feeding Ghosts triumphed in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, competing against top English prose globally. Remarkably, this is Hulls’ debut graphic novel.

The Pulitzer Prize, widely regarded as the most prestigious award in journalism, literature, and music in the US, ranks just below the Nobel Prize on the international stage. Despite its monumental significance in the world of comics, the win has received surprisingly little coverage. In the two weeks following the announcement, only a few mainstream and trade publications, such as the Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, along with one major comic book news outlet, Comics Beat, have reported on this historic achievement.

The Pulitzer Prize Board described Feeding Ghosts as “An affecting work of literary art and discovery whose illustrations bring to life three generations of Chinese women – the author, her mother and grandmother, and the experience of trauma handed down with family histories.” The narrative spans the impact of Chinese history across these generations, focusing on Hulls’ grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist caught in the upheaval of the 1949 Communist victory. After escaping to Hong Kong, she authored a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival, but later succumbed to a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Hulls, influenced by her grandmother and mother’s struggles with unexamined trauma and mental illness, embarked on a journey that took her to the most remote parts of the world. Eventually, she returned to confront her own fears and traumas, a process she describes as a generational haunting that required familial love to heal. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this,” Hulls shared in a recent interview. She named her book Feeding Ghosts to reflect the beginning of her nine-year journey fulfilling what she felt was her family duty.

Despite the acclaim, Hulls has hinted that Feeding Ghosts might be her final graphic novel. In another interview, she expressed that the solitary nature of graphic novel creation was too isolating for her creative needs. She prefers engaging with the world directly, which has led her to pursue a new path as an embedded comics journalist, working alongside field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments, as detailed on her website.

As we celebrate this groundbreaking work, it’s crucial to recognize and appreciate Feeding Ghosts beyond the confines of the comic world, acknowledging its profound impact and the art form’s potential for deep storytelling.