Ginseng Roots

Craig Thompson's Ginseng Roots, published by Uncivilized Books from 2019 to 2023, is a 12-issue comic that intertwines a deeply personal memoir of his Wisconsin childhood with a broader, lyrical history of the American ginseng trade. Through Thompson's distinctive, flowing artwork, the series draws parallels between the labor of farming this fickle root and the cultivation of memory, family, and place. It stands as a quietly monumental work, offering a meditative, earthy counterpoint to his earlier epic Blankets, while also weaving in literary echoes from Hermann Hesse.