"Pulitzer-Winning Graphic Novel 'Feeding Ghosts' Receives Minimal Reaction"

The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir (MCD, 2024) by Tessa Hulls has achieved a historic milestone by winning the Pulitzer Prize, announced on May 5. This marks a significant moment in literary history as it becomes only the second graphic novel to ever receive this prestigious award, following Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1992. Notably, while Maus was honored with a Special Award, Feeding Ghosts triumphed in the regular Memoir or Autobiography category, competing against the finest English prose globally. Remarkably, this accolade comes with Feeding Ghosts being Hulls' debut in the graphic novel genre.

Despite its groundbreaking achievement, the Pulitzer win for Feeding Ghosts 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, and one major comic book news outlet, Comics Beat, reporting on it. This is especially noteworthy given that the Pulitzer Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award in the fields of journalism, literature, and music in the US, surpassed only by the Nobel Prize internationally.

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." The graphic novel, which took nearly a decade to complete, traces the impact of Chinese history across three generations. It follows the journey of Hulls' grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist caught in the upheaval of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, Sun Yi wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival, but subsequently suffered a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Hulls herself grew up witnessing the struggles of her mother and grandmother under the burden of unexamined trauma and mental illness. Her response was to leave home and explore the most remote parts of the world. However, she eventually returned to confront her own fears and trauma, a process she describes as a generational haunting that required the healing power of family love.

In an interview last month, Hulls explained her motivation for the project, stating, "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 monumental achievement, Hulls has expressed that Feeding Ghosts may be her last graphic novel. In another interview, she revealed, "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 shares her intention to transition into an embedded comics journalist, working alongside field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments.

Regardless of what the future holds for this pioneering artist, Feeding Ghosts deserves widespread recognition and celebration, extending beyond the realm of comics and into the broader world of literature and art.