May 3, 2025

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by Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast

Hey there! Welcome to the NPR Books newsletter. Last week we talked about the gender breakdown in book preferences. Your thoughts below! As always, the inbox is bookoftheday@npr.org and subscribe here to NPR’s Book of the Day podcast.

(Agri)cultural appropriation vs. appreciation

I have a story publishing in a few days about the new graphic memoir, Ginseng Roots, by Craig Thompson. If that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he’s the guy behind the much lauded, and sometimes banned, graphic memoir Blankets. This new book is about him growing up working on ginseng farms. The herb is a very big deal in his small hometown of Marathon, Wisconsin, which produces the overwhelming majority of American ginseng that then mostly gets exported to Asia. The piece will get into how the book uses ginseng to talk about human connection and free trade and labor and yadda yadda yadda, I’ll let you know when it drops.

Excerpts from Craig Thompson's Ginseng Roots. Pantheon

What I couldn’t fit into the piece, and what I want to talk about with you, is the subplot in the book itself about Thompson having a hard time getting it published specifically because it deals so heavily in Asian cultures. If you can’t tell from the art above, the book is filled with stories, mythologies, histories and language from different Asian cultures – Chinese, Korean, Hmong, Laotian, etc.

“My initial publisher softly rejected the book because they were wary of a ‘white guy writing about Chinese culture,’ as they were framing it,” Thompson told me in an interview.

Thompson’s 2011 book, Habibi, was very much inspired by Arabic fairy tales – leading some reviewers to question if it amounted to Orientalism (the idea that people in the Eastern world are portrayed as an “other”). And I asked Thompson if this book was a reaction to that. He told me that it wasn’t directly, but that the book itself was a meditation on this criticism (there’s a pretty funny scene in the book where a South Korean documentary crew follows him around, exoticizing him as a guy from Wisconsin).

He said growing up, working on ginseng farms, there was never a thought as to who was consuming this product in Asia. “In a way, I think that was the crime – that I had no cultural curiosity about this thing and why it was important, why it was valued,” he said. “And I was amending that now by digging into it, pun intended, but also going to South Korea and going to northeast China, to these epicenters of ginseng cultivation and consumption.”

What do you think? How do you think authors should go about writing cross-culturally? Any examples where you think it worked? Or didn’t work? Let us know – bookoftheday@npr.org.

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TBR Pile

Speaking of Ginseng Roots, it’s included in Colin Dwyer’s round up of new books you should check out this week. Also included is a debut short story collection by author Molly Olguín, which looks to have vibes similar to Shirley Jackson or Angela Carter, if that’s your thing.

NPR

Also out now is the nonfiction book The Golden Hour, by Matthew Specktor. It’s a first-hand account of the heyday years of Hollywood, and an examination of what that reflected about us, as a culture. Fresh Air book critic John Powers writes in his review, “for all of Specktor's verve, The Golden Hour tells a story of diminution, about the loss of youthful hopes, the corporatization of Hollywood, the movies' dwindling ability to feed our dreams, and the decline of the egalitarian America, imperfect but promising, that so many of us grew up with.”

Mailbag!

Last week a lot of you had some stern words to say about grouping “mystery” with “thriller and crime” as a genre!! I think I’d still defend it for the purposes of our reading poll, but I do agree it warrants a closer look. Here’s some of your responses to last week’s newsletter.

Gretchen H. wrote: “I'm a female reader of mysteries, not thrillers or crime. The ‘good wins, bad punished’ is very comforting. Not particularly a ‘cozy’ lover, but prefer the ‘Golden Age.’ Perhaps the male mind doesn't need the assurance the evil will be banished?”

Alicia M., a bookshop owner, wrote: “Just like Romance, the Mystery/Thriller genre has character tropes and regular narrative beats that readers expect, which is a comforting kind of reading experience. While we do sell a lot of ‘dad-aged men reading the next C. J. Box or Michael Connelly,’ we also sell a lot of those books to mom-aged women. One of my former mentors (late 50s/early 60s) lives for the latest Connelly novel. We also sell a lot of cozy mysteries here at our store, usually to women. Many of those books feature a ‘spunky lady detective’ (like Maisie Dobbs) or a ‘meddling mature woman’ (like Miss Marple) - which are understandably relatable tropes among our women customers.”

Suzan H. wrote: “I joke that I relax when I am about to close my eyes before bed by reading Louise Penny Gamache mysteries (and since I've read all of them, I have to start all over with them at volume one). I also have a friend that turned me onto romantasy, which is a nice blend of romance books, which I never much cared for, and science fiction fantasy, which I do enjoy. I do also read nonfiction, but that isn't what I'm reading before bed or when I'm looking to relax. Lately reading to relax has been paramount.”

That’s it for today! See you next week.

P.S., if a friend sent you this newsletter and you want to sign up, the place to do it is npr.org/newsletter/books. :)

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