Title
Craig Thompson: Ginseng Roots
Abstract
Craig Thompson spoke on his new comic series, Ginseng Roots, at this talk as part of the Wisconsin Book Festival. Thompson gave some insight into his artistic process in his conversation with Will Hsu, president of the Wisconsin-based Hsu’s Ginseng Enterprises. Hsu, a UW Madison alum, augmented Thompson’s insights with his own family’s experiences establishing the ginseng trade in Wausau, Wisconsin, as first-generation Taiwanese immigrants.
“The fact that I’m a graphic novelist now is due to ginseng,” Thompson told the audience of about 75 people at Madison’s Central Library. As a boy growing up in Wausau, Thompson and his siblings worked in ginseng fields to help with a crop grown mostly for export to East Asian markets. The Ginseng Roots series is the result of eight years of “soul searching, travels, and interviews,” including long discussions with Hsu, who is featured prominently in several volumes.
This was the first of two events that CEAS is co-sponsoring with The Wisconsin Book Festival this fall semester. The next event will be another book talk with journalists Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin in November. They will be speaking on their book, Among the Braves, which tells the story of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
Biography
Craig Thompson is a cartoonist and the author of the award-winning books Blankets, Habibi, Carnet de Voyage, Good-bye Chunky Rice, and Ginseng Roots.