Craig Thompson (Michigan, 1975) is one of the most important cartoonists of his generation. Known worldwide for the success of Blankets (2004), Thompson is not a very prolific author, tending to embark on ambitious projects that have occupied him for years. After Habibi (2011), an orientalizing story of love and faith, it took more than a decade to reread one of his comics intended for an adult audience.
Ginseng roots (Astiberri, translated by Óscar Palmer), is a book halfway between journalism and autobiography, in which the author travels to his native Wisconsin and China to explore the cultivation of the prized and expensive ginseng, the relations between the United States United and China and his own childhood, during which he spent entire summers working in the ginseng fields with his family.
During his visit to Spain, Craig Thompson spoke to elDiario.es and explains the origin of this project: “I wanted to write about plants, because of the times when we are living in the climate crisis. But I didn’t know how to approach it, because I’m not a botanist. “I find ginseng a fascinating plant, especially when we talk about the whole history of trade between the United States and China,” he adds, recalling the work of his childhood. Thompson explains how he came up with the idea of introducing an autobiographical approach: “When I told people what the book was going to be about, I could tell they were bored. So the deeper I went, the more I emphasized the personal part. The final result attempts to maintain the balance between his documented research on ginseng cultivation and memory, “a sort of sequel to Blankets“, he admits.
The nearly 450 pages of Ginseng roots They travel through the history of China, Laos and the United States, through the technical complexities of cultivating this root to which great therapeutic qualities are attributed, and through the author’s own childhood, who grew up with her sister and brother in a family. authoritarian, whose parents are born-again Christians. Combining all of this wasn’t overly complicated. “It was more of an intuitive process. When the story became denser, with too much information, it turned to the personal and emotional. And on the contrary: when I noticed that I was focusing too much on myself, I went back to research,” he explains.
Thompson’s great reference in this book is the Maltese Joe Sacco, of whom he is a great friend. “We both lived in Portland for a while,” explains the cartoonist, who is full of praise for Sacco: “I think he is the most important comic strip artist in North America and the creator of comic strips journalistic cartoons; “There were some things before him, but Sacco gave them a unique and powerful form.” For Thompson, it wasn’t so much about wanting to make a book similar to Sacco’s, but rather about following his methodology: “I wanted to immerse myself in research, get out of the isolation of the drawing board and talk to people from all over the world. world. The truth is, I loved researching ginseng and interviewing so many people. I learned a lot.
The human aspect
Throughout the reading of Ginseng roots It is clear that Craig Thompson tries to maintain a neutral point of view. Although he has his own ideas, he lets his interlocutors speak and rarely makes direct value judgments on what they say to him. “It would have been easy to say what I thought, but I tried not to impose my agenda on the reader,” he explains.
This especially applies to all international political issues discussed in the comic, when it comes to the ginseng trade between the United States and China. “I am not a specialist on the subject: I just try to humanize these places. “In the United States, the media always give a bad image of China,” underlines the author. They focus more on political issues than the people who live there, but I preferred to take a smaller, more human scale. Of course, the political unrest of recent years in his own country played an important role in the creation of this work. “My state, Wisconsin, played a major role in the election of Trump in 2016,” recalls the author of Goodbye, broken rice (1999).
There is one point in this new book that is inevitably controversial: Although Thompson fondly remembers the summers when he worked ginseng farming, he and his brother were still two young children doing hard labor in the field for many years. long days in the sun. “In the United States, child labor was common until the 1940s,” explains the cartoonist, “and children worked many hours in factories, in very dangerous conditions. » Child labor was prohibited, but an exception was established: “Family farming. “People who owned a farm expected their children to contribute to the household economy,” says Thompson.
Chronic hand disease
But the author is well aware that the current situation is different from the one he experienced in the 1980s. “Today, we no longer have family farms, but rather large companies. And you won’t find white kids, like me, working in agriculture. But you will find children of immigrants working in American fields. » Although in Ginseng roots He tries not to make his opinion explicit, but in the interview he is more critical: “People look the other way because they don’t want to know that the products they buy in the supermarket have been collected by children, the United States. Let’s not talk about what’s happening outside, in countries where there are fewer regulations.” As he tells in his work, when they were children, he and his brother – who also participates, with some drawings – were able to keep part of the money they earned, which they invested in buying toys, trinkets and, above all, comic books. “But most of the children who work today in the United States have no choice: they do it to help their families. “It’s a question of survival, not pleasure,” he admits.
In Ginseng rootsCraig Thompson also talks about the problems caused by a chronic illness affecting his hands. “It was the biggest challenge I faced,” he admits. “I was reluctant to include it in the book, because I was afraid of coming across as too whiny. But then I realized that everyone has their own health problems at one time or another: it is a completely understandable human experience of vulnerability,” explains the author.
When we ask Thompson about the state of his hands today, he admits that the problem persists: “It’s gotten worse in recent years, it’s triggered by stress. This is probably influenced by the chemicals I was exposed to growing ginseng. It’s hard to say, it’s like being diagnosed with cancer. Where does cancer come from? “There are many factors, some genetic, some environmental.”
The author continues to draw despite the pain, while working to understand that it cannot be cured, “but it can stop its progression”, he says, for which he has tried different therapies, as shown in his recent comic strip.
The first complete graphic novel
The importance of Blankets It’s hard to match. In Spain, it was one of the first comics of such length (600 pages) that it was published directly as a single book rather than as a series of smaller volumes. It was a risky bet on the part of the publisher Astiberri, which turned out to be very successful: Blankets it’s a long sellerwhich already has seven editions.
“In the United States, the same thing happened: before Blankets comic books had never been published that long,” Thompson recalls. “Graphic novels used to be published in series, as happened with Maus by Art Spiegelman, Jimmy Corrigan by Chris Ware or black hole by Charles Burns. No one had seen a graphic novel like this, without prior serialization. I was very lucky, it was the right time.
The shadow of his first great editorial success is very present in Ginseng rootsnot only because it once again deals with his family past, but also because it includes several visual quotations from this work which won him the main prizes of the American comics industry in 2004: the Eisner, the Harvey and the Ignatz. “Today, I envy the innocence of “Blankets”, Thompson acknowledges. “I was 23, the comic book industry didn’t exist yet. For me it was a labor of love, I wasn’t doing it for money. I worked as an illustrator and then, in my free time, I worked on BlanketsIn my opinion. “I didn’t think anyone would read it,” he explains.
Today, things have changed a lot, both for the market and for itself. “In Blankets There’s a lack of self-awareness that I’ve lost today, because now there’s an industry, I have readers, and there are expectations of my work. There is even an academic journal of graphic novels! This is something none of us could have dreamed of back then. I miss this innocence. Also being 20 years old [risas]”.
