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

The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls, published by MCD in 2024, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, announced on May 5. This prestigious accolade marks a historic moment as it is only the second graphic novel to win a Pulitzer, following Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1992, which received a Special Award. Remarkably, Feeding Ghosts secured the prize in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, competing against top-tier English prose globally. This achievement is even more impressive as it is Hulls' debut graphic novel.

The Pulitzer Prize, widely regarded 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. Despite the significance of this win, the news has received minimal coverage. 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 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 narrative spans the impact of Chinese history across these generations. Hulls' grandmother, Sun Yi, a journalist from Shanghai, was caught in the upheaval of the 1949 Communist victory. She fled to Hong Kong and authored a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival, only to later suffer a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Hulls, having grown up with Sun Yi, witnessed her mother and grandmother grappling with unexamined trauma and mental illness. This led Hulls to leave home and travel to remote corners of the world. However, she eventually returned to confront her own fears and generational trauma, a journey she describes as a familial duty. "I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this," Hulls stated 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 the success of Feeding Ghosts, Hulls has indicated that this might be her only graphic novel. "I learned that being a graphic novelist is really too isolating for me," she mentioned in another interview. Her future aspirations include becoming an embedded comics journalist, working alongside field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments, as outlined on her website.

Regardless of what lies ahead for Tessa Hulls, Feeding Ghosts is a groundbreaking work that deserves recognition and celebration beyond the comics community.