Genre is a slippery beast at the best of times, but Craig Thompson’s new book is particularly hard to categorise. It’s a memoir, graphic novel, and piece of social commentary, all based around ginseng. Living in the dirt poor (literally) midwest in the 1980s, his family farmed the plant, with its weird humanoid roots, and Thompson and his brother spent their youths caked in mud and chemicals plucking them from the ground for a dollar an hour. Ginseng is an essential ingredient in many Chinese medicines, as well as a range of health gimmicks, and for various reasons, Wisconsin has been an unlikely centre of global production for several centuries.
Originally published in 12 issues from 2019 to 2024, Ginseng Roots is epic in length and breadth, but simultaneously pleasingly narrow in scope. It plays out in multiple strands that examine both the minutiae of a man’s life and the cultural history of a difficult-to-grow crop (once harvested, it cannot be grown in the same field again).
