Excerpt from The Resisters by Gish Jen, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Yet Gwen's particular gift awed us in a special way. Was there not something miraculous about it—this ability? This talent? This knack? This utterly useless aptitude? Where did it come from? What was its purpose? We were, as I said, in awe. And maybe that was why we used that phrase, "God-given"—a phrase whose meaning we did not quite know, but that meant, we understood, beyond us. Beyond our ken. Beyond our grasp. Beyond human understanding, and beyond inhuman understanding, too. Beyond Aunt Nettie. And as a father, all I wanted was to see her, in all her giftedness and idiosyncratic humanity, bloom.

Excerpted from The Resisters by Gish Jen. Copyright © 2020 by Gish Jen. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.