The Resisters by Gish Jen

The Resisters Reviews

• 
  Barbara

  “The Resisters” by Gish Jen is an interesting speculative/dystopian story about a spunky disenfranchised family who exist against the establishment. What’s different about this novel, is that it’s not a dark, stark, and doleful story as the genre generally implies. It is almost a futuristic cautionary tale of what could become of us if we allow technology, in the wrong hands, to take over our world.
  
  America is now called “AutoAmerica” because most jobs are automated. Industrial pollution has taken over the world and there is very limited livable ground. American society has been divided into the “netted” who are favored (and lily-white folk), and “surplus” who are people of color who used to do the blue color work that is now automated. Netted people are professionals who have homes and eat the foods they want, and use the internet as they want. The Surplus live in pontoon houseboats and are fed food that seemed to be medicated for impassive behavior. For the Surplus people, their homes are controlled by the autonet (think Alexa and The Nest). The house talks to you and will make decisions for you. It’s a bit like Big Brother monitoring all your movements, although author Gish doesn’t make it clear if there are humans behind the decisions. The netted are educated while for surplus, education is illegal.
  
  The story’s family is composed of: the father Grant, who previously worked as an IT guy and is black; Eleanor(white) who was an attorney and married Grant’ and Gwen, their daughter born with an amazing pitching arm. Because of Eleanor, their home is on land. Grant creates devices that allow privacy in their home and on their land. They survive in their own way, doing illegal activities such as gardening, knitting, reading/learning. Both Eleanor and Grant are a bit rebellious, and with that rebellious spirit, and in the interest of raising Gwen to be an independent adult, Eleanor and Grant begin an underground baseball league.
  
  Much of the story is Author Gish’s ideas about what would happen if technology overtook our lives and ruled our lives, and if racism ruled. She uses Grant and Eleanor as parents who want to raise their daughter in the best way possible, given their restraints. Gwen is one of the very few surplus who is educated. And she enjoys throwing a ball, so Grant teaches her about baseball. Given that the Surplus have nothing to do, they have plenty of time to play baseball. With Grant’s IT help, they can go off the grid and find places to play their games.
  
  Baseball becomes the main thread of the story. AutoAmerica wants to win the baseball Olympics, especially against their main rival “ChinRussia”. Gish is clever in her ideas of the future of the world, and the allegiances formed. Not just in America, but in the world. Gwen becomes a pawn in the AutoAmerican politics.
  
  I enjoyed reading it mostly for Gish’s clever ideas of what could be. Plus, she pushes the ideas of “haves” and “have-nots” and each not understanding each other. Keeping the “have-nots” uneducated and repressed is a main idea. This was an interesting read, although I can’t say it would be for the mainstream.
• 
  Sarah

  The Resisters takes place in a world where most jobs have been eliminated due to automation, the world is flooded thanks to climate change, and America is run by a deranged AI people refer to as Aunt Nettie. We follow the lives of one Surplus family, through the eyes of the husband and father, Grant. (Surplus are those people that were deemed unretrainable when Automation took over, and therefore don't work anymore, but are expected to consume via their Living Points, alotted to them via Aunt Nettie.) The daughter of this family, Gwen, has a golden arm. She can throw hard, fast, and with almost perfect accuracy. Eventually this leads the family to start up an illegal Surplus baseball league.
  
  
I was frustrated with this book on multiple levels. I suppose I'll get my big complaint out of the way and tell you there are no chapters, only four parts, and we all know how much I love that...
  
But most importantly, I could not shake the feeling that this story was told from the wrong person's POV. Grant is largely an observer in all these events that feel like they happen to his wife and daughter. And sure he's a valid character, but I just don't think he was the right character. The plot revolves around Gwen. We are told her story via GreetingGrams (basically letters) that are sent back and forth to her parents in one part and it frustrated me because I wanted to care about Gwen more than I did and couldn't because of this distance created between her and the reader.
  
  
The worldbuilding is vast and detailed, and the author manages to comment on many relevant issues: racism, sexism, politics, climate change, privacy.... but again, Grant is largely unaffected by many of them, given his removal from much of the action. It just didn't feel like effective commentary to me.  It's Gwen that experiences what it's like to be one of two female players on a high performance baseball team, Gwen that attends a university where she is the only person of color thanks to a process called "PermaDerming" (bleaching your skin, basically).
  
  
As far as plot and pacing go- this is a character driven book, and most of the action is saved for part four. Most of the characters are likable (except for one whose personality was all over the place).  Most of the book is slow and there were several times I wanted to DNF.  I did become more invested around the halfway mark, as Gwen's story picks up, but a lot of it was just too slow for my taste.
  
Finally, the ending was really a disaster for me.  I think in America we expect stories about baseball to be uplifting, and while some of the games had the powerful feeling, the ending is ruined by some very dark events that take place and don't really seem to fit the tone of the rest of the book.
  
  
Overall I had very mixed feelings.  If you are interested in the dystopian aspect, I recommend reading it with a buddy so you can pick it apart and bounce ideas off each other.  If you are interested in the baseball (I was not) then go ahead and give it a try.  You might enjoy this more.
  
  
Thank you to the publisher for sending a review copy.

• 
  Julian

  It’s as if the author prepared to write this book by Googling a bunch of baseball jargon and then regurgitating every term they learned. Then they took a bunch of emerging technologies and tried to shoehorn them into baseball games, smashing their names together to make utterly ridiculous and twee names like PermaDerm, How’dIDo, HowdHeDo, DoItAgainSam, and GreetingGram, and expecting it to somehow not come off as a complete farce. Then slapping some class inequality on top to make it woke, shipping it off to a publisher, and cashing a check.
  
  Pitchers who have nothing in their arsenal are called junkballers. This book is as fun to read as rooting for a past-their-prime junkballer just chucking one lifeless fastball after another. Before you know it, it’s 10-0 in the third inning and you wonder who’s the sucker — the pitcher for still playing or you for wasting your time.
  
  Five stars for trying too hard, one star for trying to tell a coherent story. I spent half of this book wondering if this was supposed to be a satire. I still don’t know the answer.
• 
  Aristotle

  "Are you crying? Are you crying? ARE YOU CRYING? There's no crying!"
  "There's no crying in baseball!"
  
  The NY Times said this was a '1984' for our times.
  'Don’t dare call this fantasy or science fiction. This is a world all too terrifying, dangerous and real.'
  
  I read dystopian books. This just didn't work. The telling of the story was not good plus there was no story to tell.
  What am i missing?
  Why is the story of Gwen told through the eyes of her father and not Gwen? I found that clunky and awkward.
  Where's the dialogue? I felt like i was being lectured on the evils of capitalism, Amazon, the corporate world, censorship, have and have nots, blah blah blah.
  Why did Americans stop playing baseball? Was that explained?
  I just don't get it. Can someone explain it to me?
• 
  Deacon Tom F

  This book is very difficult to follow.
  
  Is it a baseball book? Not really.
  
  It tries to be a sci-fi/Dystopian book. It misses the mark. It was just not to my liking.
  
  Don't recommend.
• 
  Julia

  Baseball isn’t my thing, to watch, but I read a lot of novels and non-fiction where baseball and its players are featured:
  Empty seats by
  Wanda Adams Fischer,
  See No Color by
  Shannon Gibney,
  Evvie Drake Starts Over by
  Linda Holmes, and
  Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team by
  Steve Sheinkin had some baseball, too and the fantasy novel
  Summerland by
  Michael Chabon. (It seems improbable to me that these two are the only speculative fiction with baseball as a central conceit. Do you know of others? List them in the comments, please.)
  
  Here, like
  Station Eleven by
  Emily St. John Mandel, it’s a way to explore a dystopia. Gwen’s world is racist, sexist, clifi, people receive a basic income, are fed unhealthy food, are spied on constantly, the population of AutoAmerica is divided into the Surplus, like Gwen’s family who live in a house, but most of the neighbors live in house boats. The Netted have jobs and homes, can go to university, are made to look white and blond.
  
  Gwen was born with a golden arm, her parents find a way for her to play baseball, illegally. When the government needs her gifts to play: they send her to university, then the Olympics. Her coach calls her a female Satchel Paige. She has to research who that is. Like
  Station Eleven, this is a hopeful dystopian novel, because it takes place when people are finding ways to do more than survive; they learn to thrive and resist. Recommended by Suzanna Hermans at Oblong Books on 2/4/20 on WAMC. Borrowed from my public library.
• 
  Michael Finocchiaro

  I was a bit disappointed with this book, finding it too much of a baseball-oriented Hunger Games and the dystopia was a bit too tainted with incoherence with respect to flooding. It was unclear where this takes place other than a reference to Chattanooga and yet given the flooding, this sounded a bit unrealistic (isn't it mountainous there?) At one point, the author makes an absurd reference to a baseball player named Ichiro Mariner (obviously thinking about Ichiro Suzuki who played for the Seattle Mariners before going to the Florida Marlins and retiring a few years back). Besides these annoyances, I did not get sufficiently invested with the characters and felt that the end was a bit rushed.
• 
  Rob Schmoldt

  The premise and framework is fun, feels random but almost plausible. It will appeal to baseball fans (kinda), sci-fi fans/futurists (maybe) and anyone who has concerns about a tech-infused dystopia. My main problem was on the narrative viewpoint, which totally broke down for me when the main character heads out of the house and reliance is on the dad eavesdropping and the daughter sending long messages back home....the first technique suggests a creepy dad and the second technique is exactly what a kid in college wouldn’t do. That and it just grew wearisome for me.
  
• 
  Cia Mcalarney

  To say this book is amazing sells it short. The dystopian vision of the future here, is all too plausible -- centered on climate change, the rise of AI and class segregation. Yet the plot, centered on a family of resisters, is hopeful and compelling.
  
  Couldn't put it down. Literally woke up in the middle of the night to finish the last few pages because I couldn't get it out of my mind.
  
  Resistance, family, hope and, oh yes, baseball!
• 
  Josh

  1984 meets The Great American Novel. And yet the feminism of the author adds such wonderful layers to the protagonists: a teenage female pitching phenom and her activist lawyer mom. Narrated by the husband/dad the story is emotionally impactful and yet not solely depressing. There moments of hope and happiness in the dystopia and some of the best baseball scenes I’ve read.
• 
  Myrna

  This novel is slow to start and has distracting invented terms but so glad I stuck with it. Swirling with suspense, action, and detailed baseball plays it touches many current trends. Unlike other dystopian novels, this one’s strong point is worldbuilding. Not a grim book at all, but very possible. Good book if you like dystopian literature and baseball. 3.5 ★s!
  
• 
  Anne Marie

  Technology has invaded every aspect of everyone’s lives. People’s homes are equipped with semi-required microphones, and all citizens are chipped like animals. The Resisters is the story of a “female Satchel Paige” who just wants to play ball in a society oppressed by technology and capitalism.
  
  The summary of the plot had me intrigued. I love science fiction, and I love baseball. Plus, I would get to support an Asian American author by purchasing this book! Unfortunately, none of those qualities could save this book. 

Some say this book is too close to the world we already live in, and there is little joy or hope in diving into an all too familiar place. Though, the oddest part of this book to me was the narrator. Gish Jen missed out on a big opportunity to have this story told through the view of a female pitcher. Instead we get the story of Gwen through the eyes of her father, which feels clunky and unnatural.
  
  While The Resisters had big ideas, it only just scratched the surface. It was too ambitious to write a story about technology taking over our lives, family dynamics, being a father and husband, being a mixed race woman playing baseball, mother-daughter relationships, female friendships, and baseball. All of this is smashed into just 300 pages.
  
  There are some bright spots in the book here and there, but I found it difficult to get through the whole thing.
• 
  Samantha

  “Baseball is theater. You have to plan your moments.”
  
  Coach makes the above observation when helping Gwen with her in-game pitching strategy, but his words ring true in a broader context for this delightfully bizarre take on Dystopia.
  
  Dystopian is far from my favorite genre, but baseball fiction is one of my most favorite genres, so I decided to give this one a shot. Gish Jen’s lovely New York Times interview also helped me decide to dive in on this one. And I’m so glad I did.
  
  While this book had many plot elements in common with standard dystopian fiction, Jen has some fascinating and original takes on the genre as well. She also writes incredibly well, infusing tension with humor and conveying an important message with refreshing subtlety.
  
  And of course, it is so, SO good to read a baseball novel written by someone who seems to truly understand the sport. This is evident in both the fundamental presentation of baseball logic and the game itself as well as in the clever, humorous touches, ranging from the wink-nudge player names to the veiled joke at the expensive of a current issue in Major League Baseball: The “Keep umps human” campaign.
  
  I didn’t love the ending of the book, though I suppose many elements of it were far more realistic than what I had hoped for. Regardless, an excellent read overall.
• 
  Jan

  Speculative fiction by Gish Jen? Yes, please.
• 
  Matthew

  Wonderfully imaginative dystopian novel set in a near future "AutoAmerica" where the nation is divided into the "netted" and the "surplus." So richly realized that it all seems chillingly possible.
  
  There are some moments where the world building is overly reliant on stilted dialogue and the plot too dependent on electronic eavesdropping, but overall this is a successful blend of lots of seemingly disparate elements.
• 
  Ruthiella

  I probably doesn’t help that I’m not a huge fan of any sport, but I wasn’t really impressed with this dystopic story of a female baseball prodigy from the have-nots (the Surplus) who is offered the opportunity to cross over to the have (the Netted) in an AI world run by basically a fictionalized version of Google.
  
  The story was just too on the nose about what it was saying and how. I need a little (or in this case a lot) more nuance in my dystopia. I like to figure things out for myself.
• 
  Jamesboggie

  The Resisters was a great end to my 2020 reading. I honestly just picked it up as the only audiobook available at my library. It turned out to be one of the most distinct and compelling dystopian stories I have read in years.
  
  The Resisters spins AI, automation, surveillance, unemployment, and a universal basic income into a dystopia. In this world, the Internet of Things has spread into the government and economic spheres and gained sentience. It has used Big Data and automation to drive the economy into overproduction, creating an unemployed underclass called the Surplus. It deploys enforcement drones and autocourts to keep people in line. Aunt Nettie rules the new United States of AutoAmerica. This is solid speculation on what would happen if Silicon Valley dominated the post-scarcity world.
  
  Our window into this world is a small Blasian Surplus family. The mother Eleanor is a former immigration lawyer turned public interest attorney for the Surplus. The father is the narrator. The daughter Gwen is a baseball prodigy with Olympics potential. The family is kind, relatable, and really on the bad side of the new apartheid. In other words, a great window into this society.
  
  I will admit, I am no fan of baseball. In my more generous moments, I have described it as statistics for alcoholics. Here it provides a good entry point into AutoAmerica. Many dystopian stories struggle to find an excuse to have everyday average characters in a position to see the breadth and scope of society. Gwen's baseball career gives a good perspective on the society.
  
  I really like that The Resisters is a science fiction novel not based on a violent adventure. No space battles, no alien invasions, and no killer robots. I found it refreshing to read a science fiction novel driven by something as mundane as a family's investment in their child's baseball career. That career just happens to be in a near-future AI dystopia.
  
  I would have liked to see more of the propaganda Aunt Nettie uses to convince people to support her. What do Eleanor's critics think of her and her resistance? Aunt Nettie's program in AutoAmerica seems transparently evil to me. I want to know why the Netted would accept the domination of this dystopian AI. I get some of it is good old fashioned racism, and some of it
  
  I highly recommend The Resisters. It stands out from the pack of 1984 wannabes and The Hunger Games clones.
• 
  Wendy Cosin

  I read half of The Resisters before putting it down. It is the USA in the “near future” when everything you imagine could be bad about the Internet, AI, climate change and race/class divides is happening. There wasn't anything particularly surprising about the Internet//AI part of this vision of the future, but the way people lived in a world divided between land and water was interesting, as was the creation of a "Surplus" class of people who receive a minimum stipend to live, but are not permitted to work.
  
  The voice is that of a “Surplus” father and it is about his family, especially his daughter who is a baseball pitcher whiz. Maybe it would have helped if I liked baseball. I appreciated how the daughter experienced her interactions in college with the "Netted" (white, upper class) students and, if I had continued reading, her character would have deepened as she explored her options to "cross over”, however, the writing didn't keep me going. Regardless, I'm sure there are people who would enjoy The Resisters as a quick read about a future that may not be as dystopian as it seems.
  
  I received a free Uncorrected Proof prior to publication, which is scheduled for February 2020.
• 
  Jenny Leitsch

  A fun read in my quest to conquer the 2021 ALA Alex Award nominees. I chose this one to read along with my students' current unit on satirical dystopian fiction. It fit the bill. Other reviewers have pointed out flaws with the writing style (kind of clunky) and pacing (like ALL of part three being narrated through exchanged letters). I had concerns about the same things, but what kept me sticking with the book was the OTHER story it told: not a story about Aunt Nettie and baseball, but a story about parenting children in a rapidly-changing world, a story about raising resisters who will change the world for the better instead of being changed by it.
• 
  Alan Teder

  
  Pitch meets
  1984
  Review of the Knopf hardcover edition (Feb. 2020)
  
  The Resisters takes place in a post-climate change America where portions of the old continent are now underwater or partial boglands which are designated as the living spaces for the so-called Surplus peoples. The higher ground is controlled by the so-called Netted peoples. The country is known as AutoAmerica and is ruled by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) nicknamed Aunt Nettie. It is a surveillance state world monitored and policed by intelligent houses, automated drones and occasional human enforcers. Punishments can be physical torture, human experimentation and being cast off onto the perilous oceans. The other major world power is ChinRussia which is ruled by a similar AI.
  
  If you've read the dystopia classics such as
  We (1921) and
  1984 (1949) then the Big Brother styled surveillance state is nothing new. Those who are familiar with recent dystopia novels such as
  American War (2017) and
  The Wall (2019) will recognize similar elements such as the post-climate change conflicts and the separation and castaway punishments.
  
  What Gish Jen introduces into the above mix of dystopia clichés is the competitive spirit and group bonding that occurs in team sports with the resurrection of baseball as an American pastime which grows from an underground sport (the Surplus have gradually built cloaking devices that block some parts of Aunt Nettie's surveillance) to an Olympic event. This centres on a prodigy pitcher named Gwen (whose team is nicknamed "The Resisters") who is being raised by her parents Eleanor and Grant on what is inherited Surplus land. Grant the father is the prime narrator of the story and is a techno whiz. Eleanor the mother is an inspirational leader not only to her daughter but her entire community as she works against Aunt Nettie's domination by all existing legal means. Daughter Gwen must deal with questionable rivals, friends and coaches along the way who may be seeking to corrupt her to crossover into the Netted community.
  
  I was hesitant at first about The Resisters due to its obvious sources and inspirations but found myself swept up in the story (also note that I'm not even a baseball fan) and couldn't read it fast enough by the end.
  
  I read The Resisters as part of my gift subscription to Parnassus Books First Editions Club. Thanks to Liisa, Martin and family for that excellent Christmas gift!
  
  Trivia and Link
  Gish Jen wrote a short story which is related to The Resisters for the New York Times' Opinion series "The Privacy Project" where "novelists, poets and artists imagine life in the age of surveillance." You can read the story
  Tell Me Everything at the NYT website (from January 3, 2020, it is still available online as of March 29, 2020).
• 
  Nadine in California

  Almost 4 stars. This was a fun dystopian book - its satire is suffused with warmth and humor, and the Have-Nots of AutoAmerica (aka 'the Surplus') are a mutually supportive, enterprising community, minus a few bad apples. The warmth and humor is embodied in the voice of our narrator, Graham, the supportive dad and husband of the two heroes of the novel, Gwen and Eleanor. Humor kudoes also go to the AI embedded in their house, a monitoring system that comes across more as a fretting, sighing mother than a spy. I was also entertained by the inventive hashtag/trademark style names of the technology in this world. For example, a "Governorgram" sent to Gwen's baseball team at Net University offers them the option of genetic enhancements:

  "You can be GenetImproved in any way you like, and as for whether your offspring will be affected, should that trouble you, fear not. Thanks to GonadWrap, they will not."

  
  I don't know much about baseball, but I wasn't put off at all by the major role it plays. As a knitter I was pleasantly surprised that knitting turned out to be almost as important an activity! The only reason that I gave this book 3 stars instead of 4 was that the pace got a little slow in the middle. That might have been because a big part of the action takes place at Net U, and since the dad was narrating from home, it had to be conveyed through 'GreetingGrams' and 'PigeonGrams' (I love that!) which felt less immediate. Still, I liked the dad's voice so much I'd have missed it.)
• 
  Fredrick Danysh

  Gwen is a girl that has an amazing pitching arm since birth. Set in a world controlled by artificial intelligence and climate, society is divided into the haves and have-nots. Many of those who have been placed in the lower class by the artificial intelligent computer that controls their lives find small ways to circumvent the rules. This was a free review copy obtained via Goodreads.com.
• 
  Elbrackeen Brackeen

  Ann Patchett NYT 9/18/19
• 
  Marc Alifanz

  A dystopian novel with a baseball premise should be right in my wheelhouse. I wanted to like this so much. I just...really didn’t.
• 
  Sherri

  I lost this book back to the library about 3/4 of the way through, and I’m not sad about it. It started out strong and The premise was timely. But I lost interest quickly and nothing redeemed it.
• 
  Karin

  3.5, waivered, but opted to round up
  
  For a blurb, you may read the blurb :). This is on GR where it's easy to get to.
  
  This book was, as at least one review said, very inventive. Sometimes the writing is a amazing, but sometimes it was a bit of a muddle. What I think is that Gish Jen had a lot of fun writing this, and what I like is how she added the knitting (after I read this I heard a small part of an interview with her where she brings up how that happened). She wrote all of this from the POV of Grant, but it centre around his daughter, Gwen, who was "born with a golden arm" and can pitch amazingly, even if not quite as fast as the male pitchers when it comes to speed balls. I personally am not a baseball fan, so when she named pitches and x number fast balls it meant almost nothing to me.
  
  The world is run by AI, and people have a hard time knowing where that all ends, etc. Countries have been meshed (ChinRussia, for example, includes Japan), but there is absolutely nothing to say if AutoAmerica includes Canada and/or Mexico, but given that global warming has led to the loss of a great deal of land this is possible. This is a very feminist book, although it also deals with racism and a number of other things. This is not a book with only one or two main issued being handled.
  
  I leaned up despite the weaknesses because for me the strengths and the originality of some of this outweighed them enough to go up, not down.
• 
  Geonn Cannon

  2.5
  This book could have been so good. I was hoping for "A League of Their Own, but make it postapocalypse." I... sort of got it? This is a case of a book being told from the wrong POV. It should have been Gwen's story. It could even have been Eleanor's. It's even dedicated to "the Eleanors I've known." So why is it narrated by the father...? It puts a level of disconnected between the majority of the emotional beats. It gets to the point where the father is just passively spying/reading long overly-descriptive notes from the daughter because *it should be her story.* It's like if A League of Their Own was told entirely from Tom Hanks' POV, or if The Hunger Games was all Haymitch.
• 
  Jean Kwok

  Gish Jen's THE RESISTERS is a brilliant, creative page-turner. When I was reading it, I felt like I was peering into a crystal ball that revealed a disturbing future built upon the dangers of our present world. With the sensitivity, emotional range and prophetic power of Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE, Jen has wrought a heartbreaking, poignant novel about family, love, talent and race that you won't be able to put down.
• 
  Denise

  It took me about 50-60 pages to really get into this novel, but then I couldn’t get enough. The story is creative and it touches on many relevant political/societal/cultural themes — at times more subtly than others. Overall, I’m glad I picked this one up.