The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls, published by MCD in 2024, has achieved a historic milestone by winning the Pulitzer Prize, announced on May 5. This prestigious award marks Feeding Ghosts as the second graphic novel ever to receive this honor, following Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1992. While Maus received a Special Award, Feeding Ghosts triumphed in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, competing against the finest English prose worldwide. Remarkably, this is Hulls' debut graphic novel, making the achievement even more significant.
The Pulitzer Prize, widely regarded as the most prestigious award in journalism, literature, and music in the US, is second only to the Nobel Prize on the international stage. The win for Feeding Ghosts is a monumental event in the world of comics, yet it has surprisingly received scant attention. Since the announcement two weeks ago, coverage has been limited to a few mainstream and trade publications such as the Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, along with a single major comic book news outlet, Comics Beat.
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." Hulls spent nearly a decade crafting this narrative, which explores the impact of Chinese history across three generations. Her grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist, was caught in the upheaval of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she authored a bestselling memoir about her experiences but later suffered a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.
Hulls' personal journey is deeply intertwined with her family's history. Growing up with Sun Yi, she witnessed her mother and grandmother grappling with unexamined trauma and mental illness. Hulls coped by traveling to the most remote parts of the world, but eventually returned to confront her own fears and generational trauma. "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."
Despite this success, Hulls has expressed doubts about continuing as a graphic novelist, citing the isolating nature of the work. "I learned that being a graphic novelist is really too isolating for me," she noted in another interview. "My creative practice relies on being out in the world and responding to what I find there." On her website, she outlines her future plans to become an embedded comics journalist, collaborating with field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments.
Regardless of her future endeavors, Feeding Ghosts stands as a groundbreaking work that deserves widespread recognition and celebration beyond the comics community.
