Podcast Summary: NPR’s Book of the Day

Episode: “Feeding Ghosts” is a Graphic Memoir Grappling with Generational Trauma

Air Date: January 1, 2026
Host: Andrew Limbong (Intro), Scott Tong (Interview)
Guest: Tessa Hulls, author and artist

Episode Overview

This episode dives into Feeding Ghosts, a graphic memoir by Tessa Hulls, exploring the complexities of generational trauma within her Chinese-American family. Through candid conversation, Hulls discusses her family's history during China’s Cultural Revolution, how those experiences shaped her mother’s and grandmother’s lives, and the ways in which inherited trauma has influenced her own journey for identity, belonging, and self-understanding. The episode examines the role of storytelling, reckoning with family secrets, and the possibility of healing.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Meaning Behind “Feeding Ghosts”

• Hulls uses “ghosts” to describe the lingering, unspoken pains from her family’s past, particularly traumas incurred during the Maoist era in China.
  • “These ghosts were the unfaced past that lived within my family. And I felt like my role as an author and as an artist was to give them nourishment by bearing witness and listening to this story.” — Tessa Hulls (01:56)

2. Beginning the Journey: Facing Family History

• Hulls describes embarking on her project in her 30s, after years of literal and emotional distance from her family.
• Facing her mother and grandmother’s pain was “the only adventure I truly feared.”
  • She admits the vulnerability was daunting: “I kind of became a hyper-independent cowboy… I knew there was going to be just a painful and rewarding softening that would come if I turned and faced my mother and faced my grandmother…” — Tessa Hulls (02:43)

3. Discovering Her Grandmother’s Story

• Grandmother’s Early Life: Born in Suzhou, fiercely independent, became a journalist in Shanghai during China's civil war.
• Persecution: Branded for her dissident journalism after the Communist revolution. She faced isolation from family, professional disgrace, and state persecution.
• Family Trauma: Grandmother had a relationship with a Swiss diplomat, raising a mixed-race child (Hulls’ mother) alone—“the black mark” of both political and racial stigma.
  • “Eventually she was able to smuggle herself and my mother out of the country just before the Great Leap Forward, and they fled to Hong Kong beneath the false bottom of a fishing boat.” — Tessa Hulls (04:34)
• Mental Health: Grandmother dedicated herself obsessively to writing her memoir, then suffered breakdowns and was institutionalized; Hulls’ mother grew up an orphan at boarding school.

4. Moral Ambiguity and Redefining Relatives

• Reading grandmother’s memoir revealed an unexpected, complicated person, not the wholly sympathetic figure Hulls imagined:
  • “She made very morally ambiguous and, quite frankly, calculating choices that I really tried to reconcile in the book…” — Tessa Hulls (05:56)
• Her grandmother’s beauty was leveraged “to sleep her way into the power structures of whiteness”—a survival strategy in deeply segregated Shanghai (06:25).

5. Patterns of Disconnection and Trauma

• Themes of isolation—both emotional and physical—run through three generations.
• Hulls recognizes her own “American” version of severing connection: “really pathological notion of freedom.”
  • “The echoes of this generational trauma were going to lead me to the same place that my mom and grandma had ended up in, where we basically couldn't connect with the broader world…” — Tessa Hulls (07:00)

6. Intergenerational Relationships and Healing

• Scott Tong asks if Hulls’ mother repeated patterns from her own childhood—caretaking, inability to show love without crisis.
  • Hulls unpacks how her mother’s caretaking for her mentally ill mother left her ill-equipped for healthy affection: “Her understanding of what a loving relationship is was really trapped within this cycle of crisis and salvation…” (07:52)
  • Hulls’ mother, fearing inherited mental illness, discouraged creative pursuits out of love and fear.

7. Transformation Through Storytelling and Shared Work

• The memoir process brought mother and daughter closer:
  • “My mom and I worked together closely on this book and actually went on multiple international research trips together… I traveled to China with my mom and met my family for the first time with her serving as my translator. So it's been really powerful.” — Tessa Hulls (08:46)
• Achieving mutual understanding of their different upbringings and versions of love.

8. Understanding Heritage as “Negative Space”

• China as both absent and ever-present in Hulls’ life:
  • “For those of us who are born in the US to immigrant parents, there's a way in which we're both completely severed from our parents' culture and yet also defined by that absence.” — Tessa Hulls (09:36)

9. Personal Change and Moving Forward

• Hulls reflects on her shift from “cowboy” individualist to someone valuing connection:
  • “I think I am a reformed cowboy. I still have that same quest for the frontier. But I also understand how much of that was always an illusion and coming from a place of really deep pain. And I think now I'm trying to find a way to have a life that carries those freedoms… but is also really tied to other people.” — Tessa Hulls (10:25)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On family ghosts: “I felt like my role as an author and as an artist was to give them nourishment by bearing witness and listening to this story…” (Tessa Hulls, 01:56)
• On vulnerability: “It was the only adventure I truly feared.” (Scott Tong quoting Hulls’ memoir, 02:26)
• On inherited pain: “The echoes of this generational trauma were going to lead me to the same place… where we basically couldn't connect with the broader world…” (Tessa Hulls, 07:00)
• On healing: “It brought us to a place that seemed previously impossible, where we're able to understand that although we have these fundamental differences… both of our versions of love and morality and duty can be real.” (Tessa Hulls, 08:46)
• On change: “I think I am a reformed cowboy... now I'm trying to find a way to have a life that carries those freedoms… but is also really tied to other people.” (Tessa Hulls, 10:25)

Key Timestamps

• 01:56: The metaphor of “feeding ghosts” and bearing witness
• 02:43: Hulls’ fear in confronting her family’s history
• 04:34: Grandmother’s escape from China and subsequent breakdown
• 05:56: grappling with grandmother’s morally ambiguous decisions
• 07:00: Recognition of generational patterns of disconnection
• 08:46: Memoir process fosters reconciliation between Hulls and her mother
• 09:36: The unique experience of cultural “negative space”
• 10:25: Hulls’ personal growth—“reformed cowboy”

Conclusion

Feeding Ghosts is not just a memoir of one family’s harrowing past but also a testament to the complexities of inherited trauma and the ways we reconcile our histories. Tessa Hulls’ journey—emotionally honest, occasionally raw, and ultimately transformative—offers hope that confronting discomfort and asking hard questions can build compassion and connection where there once was distance.