Feeding Ghosts

Feeding Ghosts is a graphic memoir of three generations of Chinese women. It was published last year and has won many awards. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir and was a winner of the National Books Critics Circle. Also, the book won the Libby Award For Best Graphic Novel and was a Kirkus Nonfiction Prize finalist. This awesome memoir was also named a Best Book Of the Year by Time, Forbes, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and my library, the Chicago Public Library. It is a chunkster as it is over 400 pages long.

The publisher's summary:

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.

The story is told in black and white comic strip panels. The dialogue is densely packed into the strips so it is a slow read. However, it's well worth reading. With over 400 pages the book is definitely a chunkster. 

I was fascinated by Tessa's retelling of her mother and grandmother escaping from China and heading to the United States. She explains that there was inter-generational trauma that affected her. How she was raised and her relationships with her family was based upon her mother and grandmother's stunted emotions. Tessa inherited this. When she traveled to China with her mother, her mother was freed from her trauma and acted like she was at home. Mom was at peace from seeing the family she left behind. I wondered whether it would have been better to have stayed behind in Maoist China.

This is a memoir to cherish. I loved the story and learned alot about the immigrant experience. 5 out of 5 stars.