Feeding Ghosts
A Graphic Memoir
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR MEMOIR
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOKS CRITICS CIRCLE JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
WINNER OF THE 2025 ANISFIELD WOLF PRIZE
WINNER OF THE LIBBY AWARD FOR BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL
KIRKUS NONFICTION PRIZE FINALIST, LONGLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL, SHORTLISTED FOR THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST BOOK AWARD
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Time, Forbes, NPR, Minnesota Star Tribune, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Chicago Public Library
"Feeding Ghosts reminds us how much the personal is political . . . an audacious, awe-inspiring feat. For me, it was an essential read." —Ling Ma, author of Bliss Montage
An astonishing, deeply moving graphic memoir about three generations of Chinese women, exploring love, grief, exile, and identity.
In her acclaimed graphic memoir debut, Tessa Hulls traces the reverberations of Chinese history across three generations of women in her family. Tessa’s grandmother, Sun Yi, was a Shanghai journalist swept up by the turmoil of the 1949 Communist victory. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival—then promptly had a mental breakdown from which she never recovered.
Growing up with Sun Yi, Tessa watches both her mother and grandmother struggle beneath the weight of unexamined trauma and mental illness, and bolts to the most remote corners of the globe. But once she turns thirty, roaming begins to feel less like freedom and more like running away. Feeding Ghosts is Tessa’s homecoming, a vivid, heartbreaking journey into history that exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, andthe love that holds them together.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This stunning debut graphic novel from Tessa Hulls explores love, loss, and legacy across three generations. Hulls’ evocative illustrations depict her own story along with those of her mother, Rose, and her grandmother Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist turned political refugee. Sun Yi’s escape from communist China and the subsequent fallout set the stage for her family’s struggle with trauma and mental illness, influencing Hulls’ own journey toward self-discovery and reconciliation with her heritage. Blending personal narrative with historical depth, Feeding Ghosts is an enthralling story that’s perfectly suited to the graphic memoir genre. The vivid artwork captures the emotional gravity of each generation’s story, poignantly exploring identity, resilience, and the unbreakable bonds of family. A visual and emotional odyssey that will make you ponder the complexities of your own family, it epitomizes just how important the art of storytelling is when it comes to understanding your past.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hulls's epic, elegantly etched graphic memoir debut tangles with trauma's long tentacles as she follows three generations of her family from Mao's China to Hong Kong in the 1960s and eventually to contemporary Northern California. Sun Yi, Tessa's maternal grandmother, is a Chinese journalist at a Nationalist-leaning news outlet. After years of harassment and a forced written confession, she flees the mainland with her daughter, Rose, in 1957. In Hong Kong, Sun Yi publishes a (not quite factual) memoir about her abuse at the hands of the communist party that becomes "an overnight sensation." But trauma takes its toll, and Sun Yi spends the rest of her life in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Rose grows up as a lonely boarding school child, immigrates to Minnesota as a college student in 1970, and eventually brings her mother to the U.S. Tessa witnesses their codependency and wants none of it. As a young woman, she sees herself as a "cowboy" ("Home became everywhere except where I was from"), and takes seasonal gigs (mostly as a cook) from Antarctica to Ghana. Eventually she feels the call of her family's "hungry ghosts" and embarks on a trip to China and Hong Kong ("the only place that truly scared me") with her mother, where "the act of returning to our family's first point of rupture stitched us together into the fabric of a greater whole." The shadowy, close-hatched drawings detail the landmarks of Sun Yi's past and render expressionistic portraits of emotional truths, filling panels with maze-like layouts reminiscent of David B. The result is a revelatory work as layered as the history it explores.
