"Pulitzer-Winning Graphic Novel 'Feeding Ghosts' Surprisingly Underreacts"

The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls, published by MCD in 2024, has been honored with the prestigious Pulitzer Prize, announced on May 5. This accolade marks a significant achievement in the world of comics, as it is only the second graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer. The first was Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1992, which received a Special Award. Remarkably, Feeding Ghosts won in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, standing out against the finest English prose worldwide. It's even more impressive considering this is Hulls' debut graphic novel.

The Pulitzer Prize, widely considered the most prestigious award in journalism, literature, and music in the US, ranks second only to the Nobel Prize internationally. Despite this monumental achievement, the win has received surprisingly little attention. Since the announcement two weeks ago, coverage has been sparse, with only a few mainstream and trade publications like the Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly reporting on it, alongside one major comic book news outlet, Comics Beat.

The Pulitzer Prize Board praised 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 tumultuous history of China across three generations, focusing on Hulls' grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist caught in the upheaval following the Communist victory in 1949. After escaping to Hong Kong, Sun Yi authored a bestselling memoir about her ordeal, yet later succumbed to a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Hulls grew up witnessing the struggles of her mother and grandmother under the burden of unexamined trauma and mental illness. She coped by traveling to the most remote parts of the world, but eventually returned to confront her own fears and traumas. "I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this," Hulls explained in an interview last month. "My book is called Feeding Ghosts, because that was the beginning of this nine year process of really stepping into something that was my family duty."

Interestingly, Hulls hinted that Feeding Ghosts might be her last graphic novel. "I learned that being a graphic novelist is really too isolating for me," she mentioned in another interview. Her future aspirations involve becoming an embedded comics journalist, collaborating with field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments, as stated on her website.

Regardless of what lies ahead for Tessa Hulls, Feeding Ghosts stands as a testament to the power and artistry of graphic novels, deserving recognition and celebration beyond the comics community.