Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

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

town_scar's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

This was simultaneously hard to put down and required I put it down repeatedly in order to process and reflect. This touches close to home for me, in ways I had not remotely anticipated when picking it up but I'm endlessly grateful for. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Genocide, Mental illness, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexism, Torture, Toxic relationship, Dementia, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Colonisation, War, and Classism

Moderate: Racial slurs, Murder, and Gaslighting

Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, Cannibalism, and Abortion

Illustrated depictions of emaciated humans, self harm, and imagery of suicide paraphernalia without actual depiction are present. Numerous acknowledgments and some depictions of human atrocities such as genocide, warfare, and famine.

shay43geek's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful inspiring sad tense slow-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Infidelity, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Pregnancy

dittotrainer's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, 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.