Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls

6 reviews

msrumphius's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Self harm, Violence, Grief, Cannibalism, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Abandonment, Colonisation, War, and Classism

Moderate: Death, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Dementia, Medical trauma, and Suicide attempt

siriface's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Dementia, Grief, Medical trauma, and War

amris's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Mental illness, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Dementia, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Colonisation

Moderate: Racism, Rape, Self harm, Medical content, Medical trauma, and War

Minor: Child death, Misogyny, Blood, Cannibalism, and Abortion

lesbrarian220's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Torture, Police brutality, and War

jayisreading's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

In this powerful graphic memoir with a unique art style, Tessa Hulls takes a deep dive into the complexities of history, immigration, generational trauma, and healing in her family. I admit that I didn’t expect such a deeply nuanced look into these themes in a graphic memoir, especially with how Hulls weaves together all these complex ideas to show the ramifications of significant turmoil in twentieth-century China on the generations after those who went through said turmoil. I also really appreciated how Hulls takes a close look into how mental illness was approached in her family, as well as its deep ties to trauma and memory. There was a refreshing frankness to this approach that I feel isn’t as widely discussed among the Asian diaspora (though this is definitely changing).

This book also had me thinking a lot about what was passed down to me—one of the first in my family to be born in the United States—and how I had/have to contend with similar disconnects and traumas that Hulls (as well as her mother) went through. Most (if not all) go unspoken, and there’s often a kind of loneliness in having to deal with them on your own. However, finding community makes a world of a difference, as Hulls aptly pointed out when she found her safe space. With all that said, I found myself having to read this book very slowly because there was just a lot of information and thoughts to sit with; I did appreciate every detailed page though. (I will admit that one small criticism I have is that some pages just had too much information, so much that it occasionally made it difficult to make sense of the bigger picture.)

All-in-all, this is a graphic memoir well worth picking up for how informative and reflective it is, and it will especially hit close to home if you also have a similar background as Hulls.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Racism, Grief, Colonisation, War, and Classism

Moderate: Confinement, Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Addiction, Rape, Dementia, Cannibalism, Abortion, and Murder

ginnylambda's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Racism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Grief, and War

Moderate: Gore and Blood

Minor: Self harm

Black & white depiction of self-harm in chapter about adolescence as well as acknowledgement of SH behaviours/scars between two teens - just two pages right next to each other. While the images are in black and white, there is a recurrent image/depiction of black fluid swarming/pouring in and out of characters - it could resemble blood or vomit and is very visceral.