Feeding Ghosts: A Memoir
Finalist for the 2024 Nonfiction Kirkus Prize • Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Named a Best Book of 2024 by Time, Forbes, Kirkus Reviews, LitHub, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Guardian, NPR, and Indigo • One of Kobo CA's Top Graphic Novel Ebooks of 2024 Persepolis meets Crying in H Mart in this astonishing, deeply moving graphic memoir of three generations of women, exploring love, grief, exile, identity, and forgiveness. In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir, Tessa Hulls tells the story of three generations of women: her grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself. Sun Yi was a Shanghai journalist caught in the political crosshairs of the 1949 Communist victory in China. After fleeing to Hong Kong with her young daughter, Sun Yi wrote a bestselling memoir about her persecution and survival—then promptly had a breakdown that left her committed to a mental institution. Growing up, Tessa watches her mother care for Sun Yi, both of them struggling under the weight of Sun Yi’s unexamined trauma and mental illness. Vowing to escape her mother’s smothering fear, Tessa leaves home and travels to the farthest, most remote corners of the globe. But once she turns thirty, her roaming begins to feel less like freedom and more like running away, so she returns to face the history that shaped her family. Extensively researched and gorgeously rendered, Feeding Ghosts is Tessa’s homecoming, a vivid journey into the beating heart of one family, set against the dark backdrop of modern Chinese history. By turns fascinating and heartbreaking, inventive and poignant, Feeding Ghosts exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, and the love that holds them together. |
Contents
PROLOGUE | 1 |
PART 8 PART | 9 |
The Time When Burning Down The Creation | 293 |
EPILOGUE | 363 |
The Ocean | 383 |
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Common terms and phrases
ADRIENNE RICH AMERICAN ANTARCTICA ASIAN ASIAN AMERICAN ASKED BACK BECAME BEGAN BIKE BOAT BOOK CASTLE PEAK CHILD CHILDHOOD CHINA CHINESE HISTORY COMMUNIST PARTY COUNTRY COWBOY CRAZY CULTURAL REVOLUTION DAUGHTER DECADES Dikötter DIOCESAN GIRLS EMOTIONAL EURASIAN EVERYTHING FAMILY FAMILY'S STORY FEAR Feeding Ghosts FEEL FELT FIND FORCED FRIENDS GHOST TWIN GIRLS GRANDMA GRANDMOTHER GRANDMOTHER'S MEMOIR GREAT-AUNTIE HEART HELD HELP HOME HONG KONG HOSPITAL IAN MCLACHLAN JAPANESE JOURNALIST Kappeler KNEW KNOW KONG'S LANGUAGE LEARNED LEFT LIVED LOOK LOVE MAINLAND CHINA MANDARIN MENTAL ILLNESS MIND MOM'S MOTHER MYTH NEEDED NEVER OKAY OPIUM OPIUM WAR PAST PLACE Play-Doh RAPE OF NANKING READ REALITY RED GUARDS RELATIONSHIP remember ROLE SAFE SAY I AMI SCHOOL SHANGHAI SOMEONE SPENT STARTED SUN YI SUZHOU SWISS TALK TELL Tessa Hulls THINGS THINK TOLD TOOK Tragedy of Liberation TRAP TRAUMA TRIED TRYING UNDERSTAND Vewwy WANTED WATCHED WHITE WOMAN WORDS WORLD WRITING WRONG WROTE YI'S