A Juneau-based author’s graphic memoir won a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for autobiography and memoir.
Tessa Hulls spent close to 10 years writing — and drawing — what would become “Feeding Ghosts.” KTOO interviewed Hulls last month about the memoir.
“I didn’t feel like I had a choice,” she said. “My family ghosts literally told me I had to do this.”
The story is detailed, and meta. It isn’t a quick read. Every page takes time to digest.
It’s the story of her grandmother’s life, and how she lived through the Maoist revolution in Shanghai and chronicled her experience in a book after she fled Hong Kong.
“And for her, writing was the way in which she tried to assert her own reality, even as she watched the government take over and deny everything that was happening,” Hulls said.
Soon after publishing her memoir, Hulls’ grandmother began to lose her sense of reality, and the story follows her daughter — Hulls’ mother — and eventually Hulls herself, as they travel to China and Hong Kong, piecing together their family history.
“So the places where there weren’t clear answers, I forced that uncertainty on my reader and said, ‘Look, it’s kind of a choose your own adventure here,’ because there’s no way to actually discern what actually happened, and here are the competing narratives,” she said. “And I leave it up to you to decide what path to take through it.”
Hulls has lived in and out of Alaska for years. She would alternate seasonal work for the state with jobs in restaurant kitchens, and take a couple of months for an extended bike trip in between.
That pattern stopped about a decade ago, when Hulls felt a deep calling to start the project that would eventually become her memoir. Now, in the wake of this project, she’s living in Juneau and working at the Alaska State Capitol.
Hulls launched the softcover version of “Feeding Ghosts” Tuesday evening at Alaska Robotics Gallery.
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