Review by Kevin Brown
In her debut graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, Tessa Hulls tries to understand and explain—though, most of all, feel—the intergenerational trauma she inherited from her grandmother, Sun Yi, and mother, Rose. She knows what she experienced as a child, as her grandmother suffered from a mental illness that left her obsessed with writing her story, unable to communicate otherwise, leading Rose not only to devote her energies to caring for Sun Yi, but also to overprotecting Tessa to prevent her from suffering the same fate.
Hulls spends much of the work using research to dig into Sun Yi’s life in China, showing how and why she had to flee during the Maoist revolution. Sun Yi was a journalist who became famous for writing a memoir about her time before she escaped China, fleeing to Hong Kong. However, the trauma of her repeated interrogations before she left the country leads to her mental illness, leaving her uncommunicative except for her constant writing, which becomes less and less intelligible as she ages.
Hulls also spends time talking to her mother, trying to understand how her mother coped with Sun Yi’s struggles, but also why Rose and Tessa were unable to communicate with each other. Hulls works to understand how Rose wanted emotional reactions from Tessa that she was unable to provide, leading Tessa to ultimately leave home as soon as she was able. In fact, she ends up living in Antarctica and Alaska, at various times, putting as much space between her and her mother as possible. A note to readers, as well: Tessa struggles with self-harm for a period of time, though she does not spend much time on that part of her life.
Hulls’ work on this book—ten years in the making—to face the ghosts that have haunted her family for three generations, is an attempt to work through the traumas rather than avoid them. The work is artistically and narratively dense, as Hulls has much to convey to help her and the reader understand the years of suffering, but that work is worth it for all involved. Readers will leave with a clearer understanding not just of Tessa and her family, but the effects that intergenerational trauma can have on those who have no first-hand knowledge of the suffering that began it all.
Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls. MCDxFSG Books, March 2024.
Reviewer bio: Kevin Brown has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. IG, Threads, and BlueSky: @kevinbrownwrites