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, and the love that holds them together. (From the publisher)
Juror Citation
Tessa Hulls’ graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, is a compendious multi-generational epic combining a sweeping history of twentieth century China with an intimate, extraordinary family story. Stories indeed – our most precious inheritance – lie at the heart of this remarkable volume: the gnawing need to tell them and the hunger to hear them. Across three generations of the women in her family, Hulls’ describes the challenges of being a refugee, being an immigrant, being mixed race, always acutely aware of how the stories of trauma, are often themselves traumatizing to tell. Yet she also embodies the rich rewards – in understanding and healing – that the tenacity to tell them can bring. As she notes towards the end of this heartbreaking and beautiful work the Chinese word for writer is “literally comprised of the characters ‘make’ and ‘family/home.'” Feeding Ghosts crosses oceans, continents and decades to make whole a family, restore a home and as readers we are privileged to join a journey told in such richly expressive images and vivid prose. – Peter Ho Davies
