The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD, 2024) by Tessa Hulls has achieved a remarkable feat by winning the Pulitzer Prize, announced on May 5. This prestigious award, widely considered the most prestigious in journalism, literature, and music in the US and second only to the Nobel Prize internationally, marks a significant milestone in the world of comics.
Feeding Ghosts is only the second graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer, following Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1992, which received a Special Award. Remarkably, Hulls' work triumphed in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, competing against the finest English prose globally. This victory is especially noteworthy as it is Hulls’ debut graphic novel.
Despite this monumental achievement, the news has received surprisingly little attention. Since the announcement two weeks ago, 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 it.
The Pulitzer Prize Board called Feeding Ghosts “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 took Hulls nearly a decade to complete and traces the impact of Chinese history across three generations. Her grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist, was caught in the turmoil of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she authored a best-selling memoir about her persecution and survival, but later suffered from a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.
Hulls herself grew up witnessing her mother and grandmother struggle with unexamined trauma and mental illness. This led her to initially leave home for remote corners of the world. However, she eventually returned to confront her own fears and traumas, a journey she describes as a "generational haunting" that could only be healed with familial love.
In an interview last month, Hulls explained her motivation: “I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this. 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 may be her 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, working with field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments.
Regardless of her future endeavors, Feeding Ghosts deserves recognition and celebration beyond the realm of comics, highlighting the profound impact and artistic merit of graphic novels.
