Ginseng Roots

About Ginseng Roots

“A sweeping story, gorgeously drawn and beautifully told — this is Craig Thompson’s masterpiece.” —Joe Sacco, author of Palestine and Paying the Land

From the celebrated author of Blankets and Habibi comes a new graphic memoir exploring the class divide, childhood labor, family, and our globalized world—all centered on Wisconsin’s ginseng farming industry

When Blankets first published in 2003, Craig Thompson’s seminal memoir about first love and faith lost in rural Wisconsin debuted to rapturous acclaim. The winner of two Eisner and three Harvey Awards, it is to this day considered one of the all-time great works of graphic storytelling. Now, in Craig’s long-awaited return to the autobiographical form, comes the story that Blankets left out.

Ginseng Roots follows Craig and his siblings, who spent the summers of their youth weeding and harvesting rows of coveted American ginseng on rural Wisconsin farms for one dollar an hour. In his trademark breathtaking pen-and-ink work, Craig interweaves this lost youth with the 300-year-old history of the global ginseng trade and the many lives it has tied together—from ginseng hunters in ancient China, to industrial farmers and migrant harvesters in the American Midwest, to his own family still grappling with the aftershocks of the bitter past. 

Stretching from Marathon, Wisconsin, to Northeast China, Ginseng Roots charts the rise of industrial agriculture, the decline of American labor, and the search for a sense of home in a rapidly changing world.