Tessa Hulls: Questions to Connect with Your Roots

Speaker 10:00

[gentle music] Aprendemos Juntos, a BBVA initiative for a better world. Tessa Halls. Tessa Halls is an American artist, writer, and adventurer best known for her graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2025. The book explores family legacy, multicultural identity, grief, exile, and mental health through three generations of Chinese women. Only once before has a graphic novel won a Pulitzer, Maus in 1992. Halls has also published essays in outlets like the Washington Post, and is known for her travels, including cycling through Ghana, experiences that have shaped her research and public talks.

Tessa Hulls· Guest0:53

I also grew up in a family that had a lot of darkness because my grandmother, Sanyi, had lived through political persecution and trauma during the communist takeover in China, and I knew eventually I was going to have to learn how to use this adventurous spirit of mine to come home and tell that story. But that took me a long time, and so when I was younger, I learned to love biking alone across continents. I accidentally became a chef. I worked at a science research station cooking in Antarctica, went looking for shipwrecks in small islands in Alaska. And eventually,