The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD, 2024) by Tessa Hulls has achieved a remarkable milestone by winning the Pulitzer Prize, announced on May 5. This accolade marks it as the second graphic novel to ever win the Pulitzer, following Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1992, which won a Special Award. Remarkably, Feeding Ghosts triumphed in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, competing against the finest English prose globally. This achievement is even more astounding as it is Hulls' debut graphic novel.
The Pulitzer Prize, widely regarded as the most prestigious award in journalism, literature, and music in the US, stands just below the Nobel Prize on the international stage. This momentous accomplishment should be the biggest news in the comics world, yet surprisingly, it has received scant attention. Since its win two weeks ago, coverage has been limited to a few mainstream and trade presses, including Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, and only one major comic book news outlet, Comics Beat.
Hulls poured nearly a decade into creating Feeding Ghosts, a work the Pulitzer Prize Board described 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 graphic novel traces the impact of Chinese history across these generations. Hulls’ grandmother, Sun Yi, was a Shanghai journalist caught in the upheaval of the 1949 Communist victory. After escaping to Hong Kong, she authored a best-selling memoir about her persecution and survival, but later succumbed to a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.
Growing up with Sun Yi, Hulls witnessed her mother and grandmother grappling with unexamined trauma and mental illness. This led Hulls to seek solitude in remote parts of the world, but she eventually returned to confront her own fears and trauma. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this,” Hulls explained in a recent interview. “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 indicated that Feeding Ghosts might be her first and last graphic novel. In another interview, she shared, “I learned that being a graphic novelist is really too isolating for me. My creative practice relies on being out in the world and responding to what I find there.” On her website, she expresses her intention to transition into an embedded comics journalist, collaborating with field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments.
Whatever path Tessa Hulls chooses next, Feeding Ghosts deserves widespread recognition and celebration beyond the comics community, for its profound storytelling and artistic merit.
