"Feeding Ghosts" Wins Pulitzer, Yet Receives Minimal Response

The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD, 2024) by Tessa Hulls has achieved a remarkable milestone by winning the Pulitzer Prize, as announced on May 5. This prestigious accolade marks the second time a graphic novel has received this honor, following Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1992, which won a Special Award. Notably, Feeding Ghosts secured the prize in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, competing against top-tier English prose globally. This triumph is even more significant as it represents Hulls' debut in the genre of graphic novels.

The Pulitzer Prize, widely recognized as the most prestigious award in the fields of journalism, literature, and music in the United States, ranks just below the Nobel Prize on the international stage. This monumental achievement for Feeding Ghosts should be a major highlight in the world of comics, yet it has garnered surprisingly little attention. 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 covered this groundbreaking win.

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." Hulls spent nearly a decade crafting this narrative, which explores the impact of Chinese history across three generations. Her grandmother, Sun Yi, was a Shanghai journalist caught in the upheaval of the 1949 Communist victory. After escaping to Hong Kong, she authored a bestselling memoir detailing her persecution and survival, but later succumbed to a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Hulls herself grew up witnessing the struggles of her mother and grandmother with unexamined trauma and mental illness. Her response was to travel to the most remote corners of the world, only to return and confront her own fears and traumas. In an interview last month, Hulls explained, “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 the acclaim, Hulls has expressed that Feeding Ghosts might be her first and last graphic novel. In another interview, she noted, “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 announces her intention to transition into becoming 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 testament to the power and depth of graphic novels as an art form, deserving recognition and celebration beyond the confines of the comics world.