Ginseng Roots (2019 Uncivilized Comics) comic books 2021
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Issue #8
Published Feb 2021 by Uncivilized Comics.$9.00
Written, Art and Cover by Craig Thompson. 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. 32 pages, PC/PB&W. Cover price $6.00.
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Issue #9
Published Nov 2021 by Uncivilized Comics.$12.00
$10.00
Story by Craig Thompson. 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. 32 pages, PC/B&W. Cover price $6.00.
