Artist and writer Tessa Hulls is “Feeding Ghosts” by chasing the story of three generations of women within her family.

A graphic memoir six years in the making, Hulls has been on a journey of discovery, stitching together the pieces to illustrate the life of her late grandmother, Sun Yi, a persecuted journalist and single mother.

What first paints a Shanghai in chaos amid the 1949 communist takeover, Hulls’ nonfiction graphic novel “Feeding Ghosts” chronicles her mother, Rose Kappeler Hulls, and her grandmother’s flight from political persecution in China and their eventual immigration to the United States.

“It has been a continual process of being surprised by what I learn — both emotionally and in terms of the broadening historical context I’ve come to understand,” explained Hulls.

Based on her family research and travels to China, the story examines loss of culture, mixed race identity, and mental illness. It also explores immigration, loss of language, and touches on the generational inheritance of trauma.

When asked about her graphic memoir, her condensed version is that it’s about “the ways in which mothers and daughters both damage and save one another.”

An experienced visual artist and writer of creative nonfiction, Hulls combined the two and taught herself to work in comics for this book.

“I knew that I couldn’t quite tell this story in words and I couldn’t quite tell it in paintings, but that I needed to be able to do it in this synthesis of the two,” Hulls said of her storytelling medium.

“One of the main scenes is the complications of being mixed race and being simultaneously both and neither. I think that working in a graphic novel gives the perfect vehicle to be able to explore that tension,” she explained.

“You can tell simultaneous stories by having words and images contradict each other. There’s a synergy that happens where I think graphic novels are very potent for telling stories about dense information, particularly history,” the author added.

The 300-page graphic novel begins with her grandmother. From her birth in Suzhou in 1928 to her college education to her pursuit of journalism, the first section tells of Sun Yi’s life, single parenthood, political persecution, and her struggle with bipolar disorder.

Hulls had her grandmother’s memoir translated into English. Entitled “Eight Years in Shanghai,” the work gave the author a detailed look into Sun’s life in Shanghai after the communist revolution.      

“My grandmother really handed me a narrative structure on a silver platter because her memoir that I’m working from for this book really lines up with a lot of inflection points in Chinese history and so a lot of the process of working on this has been addressing my own gaping ignorance,” Hulls explained.

“I think the fact that I knew so little about Chinese history and things like the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the specifics of the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution … from a historical perspective, I’m using my grandmother’s life to give an overview of those parts of Chinese history,” she continued.

“One thing that I’m hoping for,” Hulls added, “is to kind of shine a light on some parts of that history that aren’t really taught in the U.S. educational system.”

The second part of “Feeding Ghosts” is centered around Hulls’s mother, Rose. A third part of the graphic memoir touches on Hulls’ own story, dealing with her life to the present.

This project has brought her closeness and closure in a way that she describes as having “transformed my relationship with my mother and my understanding of the ghosts that’s shaped my family. That’s been very powerful … and exhausting.”

“I think growing up, my family was really built around negative space and I wanted to fill in some of those blank spots and just stop feeling consumed by silence,” she added.

A story riddled with the complexities that come with mother-daughter relationships, “Feeding Ghosts” is a tale for anyone.

“I think people who have complicated relationships with their mothers will hopefully find something that speaks to them in the story,” she said.

“I hope that [readers] can see the compassion I hold for my mother. I think every time I do a revision, every time I structure a page, the guiding question that I’m trying to hold in my mind and in my heart is ‘Where can I place more compassion?’” Hulls explained.

“I really just hope that the compassion within this very difficult story comes through,” she said.

“Feeding Ghosts” is set for publication in late 2022.