"Feeding Ghosts Wins Pulitzer, Yet Receives Minimal Reaction"

The graphic novel Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir by Tessa Hulls, published by MCD in 2024, has achieved a remarkable milestone by winning the Pulitzer Prize on May 5. This prestigious award, often considered the pinnacle of recognition in journalism, literature, and music within the United States and second only to the Nobel Prize internationally, has spotlighted Hulls' debut work in a significant way.

Feeding Ghosts is only the second graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer, following Art Spiegelman's Maus, which won a Special Award in 1992. Remarkably, Hulls' book triumphed in the regular category of Memoir or Autobiography, competing against the finest English prose worldwide. This achievement underscores the growing recognition of graphic novels as a serious and impactful form of literature.

Despite this monumental accomplishment, the news has received surprisingly little coverage. Since the announcement two weeks ago, only a few mainstream and trade publications, such as Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly, along with one major comic book news outlet, Comics Beat, have reported on this significant event.

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 traces the impact of Chinese history across three generations, focusing on her grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist who fled to Hong Kong during the 1949 Communist victory. Sun Yi's best-selling memoir about her persecution and survival led to a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.

Hulls' personal journey is deeply intertwined with her family's history. Growing up with Sun Yi, she witnessed the struggles of her mother and grandmother under the weight of unexamined trauma and mental illness. This led Hulls to leave home for remote parts of the world, but she eventually returned to confront her own fears and traumas, a process she describes as a generational healing facilitated by family love.

"I didn’t feel like I had a choice. My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this," Hulls explained 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."

Interestingly, Hulls has hinted that Feeding Ghosts might be her only graphic novel. In another interview, she stated, "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." She plans to transition into an embedded comics journalist, working with field scientists, indigenous groups, and nonprofits in remote environments, as mentioned on her website.

Regardless of her future endeavors, Feeding Ghosts stands as a testament to the power and legitimacy of graphic novels as an art form, deserving of broader recognition and celebration beyond the world of comics.