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 WINNER OF THE EISNER AWARD 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. "A deep, illuminating dive into Chinese history, mental illness, and inherited trauma." ―Thi Bui, author of The Best We Could Do "Filled with compelling characters and haunting illustrations . . . [ Feeding Ghosts ] is a chronicle of journeys made by the author’s grandmother and mother from Suzhou and Shanghai to St. Paul, Minn., and the San Francisco Bay Area." ―Robert Ito, The New York Times "Revelatory . . . [Hulls's] graphic memoir traces, with devastating emotional acuity, the line between the history of China under Mao Zedong―a stretch of nearly unfathomable death and political upheaval―and the ghosts of her family’s past that she eventually unearthed . . . Hulls’ book is a breathtaking portrait of this lineage of trauma. Enlivened by her hauntingly vivid drawings, in which the past is often a surrealist, spectral presence constantly intruding upon the present." ―Brandon Yu, San Francisco Chronicle "A multigenerational story packed with drama, intrigue and heartbreak . . . A triumph of comics storytelling." ―Paul Constant, Seattle Times “While Feeding Ghosts belongs to a long tradition of subgenre-defining graphic nonfiction including Fun Home and Persepolis , Hulls’s narrative voice is uniquely captivating because she combines her cartoonist quirkiness with both a fine artist’s eye for page composition and a willingness to dive into dense subject matter without grasping for easy closure.” ―Martin Dolan, Los Angeles Review of Book “Detailed, vulnerable, [and] harrowing.” ― Booklist (starred review) “From start to finish, this book is a revelation . . . A work that glimmers with insight, acumen, and an unwillingness to settle for simple answers.” ― Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “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 . . . The result is a revelatory work as layered as the history it explores.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review) " Feeding Ghosts swallows you up in swirling eddies of ink. A visual jungle gym with the iconography of David B., the journalistic thoroughness of Joe Sacco (I learned so much), the intellect of Alison Bechdel, and a vulnerable heart completely unique to Tessa Hulls. I loved it." ―Craig Thompson, author of Blankets and Habibi “With incandescent imagery and prose, Tessa Hulls excavates the incredible, sweeping story of her matrilineal lineage, wrestling with the ways in which her family’s ghosts, experiences with mental illness, and loneliness reverberate across generations. A striking, gorgeous memoir from a spectacular talent, Feeding Ghosts will linger with readers for years to come.” ―Kat Chow, author of Seeing Ghosts “This riveting personal story, beautifully rendered in words and drawings, probes into three generations of women haunted by war, revolution, dislocation and not belonging. With breathtaking determination, the author/artist confronts her own fears across time, history and place, from Shanghai, London, San Francisco Bay area and elsewhere―even Antarctica. Feeding Ghosts will haunt you; I could not put it down.” ―Helen Zia, author of Last Boat