GINSENG ROOTS (2019)

"From ages 10 to 20, Craig Thompson (the author of Blankets) and his little brother Phil, toiled in Wisconsin farms. Weeding and harvesting ginseng-a medicinal herb that fetched huge profits in China-funded Craig's youthful obsession with comic books. Now, for the first time in his career, Thompson is working in serial form, in a bimonthly comic book series. Part memoir, part travelogue, part essay, all comic book, Ginseng Roots explores class divide, agriculture, holistic healing, the 300 year long trade relationship between China and North America, childhood labor, and the bond between two brothers. "

"Craig Thompson returns home, into the heart of rural Wisconsin, to the former global capital of ginseng cultivation. We meet his sister Sarah who was excluded from Blankets, and the Ginseng farmers who employed Craig and his brother as children. Craig explores the problems with autobiography, the nature of memory, and the editing that necessarily follows. Ginseng Roots is a masterful mix of personal history set against a background of global trade, corporate agriculture, and climate change."

"Ginseng Roots unearths the earliest recorded knowledge of ginseng and its healing properties. From the mythic figure that first discovered it: Shennong, the god of farming and medicine, through tales of ginseng hunters in the mountains of ancient China, to the first ever International Wisconsin Ginseng Festival in the author's hometown. A red thread of history and time binds the ginseng buyers from Asia with rural growers in America. "

"Craig unearths the geological origins of the Ginseng-friendly Wisconsin soil, gets a grimy, back-breaking, and lucrative job of rock picking, and develops an alarming rocky lump. The issue also touches on rural gentrification, and how various varieties of Ginseng are recognized and utilized. A stunningly drawn rich tapestry of personal experience, family history, and Wisconsin's place in the global Ginseng trade."

"The fifth issue flows along the 'crimson creek' of America's history with ginseng: from the Native people's uses of the plant, to French explorers' 'discovery' in 1716, to America's initiation of trade relations with China in 1784. Also learn how the debts of the American Revolution were paid, and how the nation's first multi-millionaire founded his fortune... and the when and why Craig's brother, Phil, started spending his salary on guns instead of comics."

"The stratification, planting, and growth cycles of the ginseng seed parallel the seasons of childhood. Ginseng berries are gathered in the last week of summer, just before school resumes and brings with it the awkward transitions of adolescence, sexuality, and friendship or a parental decision to homeschool. Before planting, ginseng seeds are doused in bleach and fungicide-a purifying ritual of sorts-like baptism-which Craig and his siblings undergo to be cleansed of sin."

"The seventh issue of Craig Thompson's Ginseng Roots follows the story of a family of Hmong immigrants that may have been the first to farm ginseng in America. The Hmong story is traced from CIA's Secret War in Laos, through the ethnic cleansing campaign in their homeland, to America's reluctant acceptance of Hmong as refugees. As they struggled with assimilation and discrimination in rural America, Hmong immigrants became the primary labor force in Wisconsin's ginseng gardens. Also, the long-awaited harvest of the roots!"

A young Hmong boy sacrifices his childhood, his education, and his future dreams to help out in the family ginseng gardens. His father is torn between the traditional Hmong customs, shamanism, and his role as a Christian pastor in America. Spring brings unexpected death and mourning, but in fall the harvest must begin again. As markets change, a new generation struggles to continue the ginseng legacy. Profits have shifted to the retail side at the expense of the farmer's hard labor. Another harvest cycle unearths ghosts in the soil, both ancestral and chemical.

Phil joins Craig during a book tour in South Korea, through Seoul and Bucheon, then extending to a research journey in rural Geumsan, the epicenter of Korean ginseng cultivation. Geumsan is the sister city to Marathon, the brothers' tiny American town, but with a deep thousand-year history of art, mythology, and cuisine surrounding the medicinal root. While there, the brothers sort out how Craig's paralyzing writer's block and Phil's marital strain are tangled up in their working-class childhood. Metallic gold ink cover.

Phil joins Craig during a book tour in South Korea, through Seoul and Bucheon, then extending to a research journey in rural Geumsan, the epicenter of Korean ginseng cultivation. Geumsan is the sister city to Marathon, the brothers' tiny American town, but with a deep thousand-year history of art, mythology, and cuisine surrounding the medicinal root. While there, the brothers sort out how Craig's paralyzing writer's block and Phil's marital strain are tangled up in their working-class childhood.

Four years in the making, the exact duration required to bring the prized crop to harvest, Ginseng Roots reaches its finale. Craig drives across the country for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary and wrestles with the ghosts of his childhood. His mother dreams of the Christian Rapture, his father sleeps in a barn with Mexican migrants, Phil imbibes ginseng moonshine, and farmers leave the ginseng industry to grow marijuana instead. This double-length issue sprawls across rural Wisconsin, reflecting on aging parents, changing America, and where to find a sense of belonging.