2012
Seattle Reads
THE SUBMISSION
by AMY WALDMAN
(206) 386-4636 • www.spl.org
A Reading Group Toolbox for The Submission
Presented by the Washington Center for the Book at The Seattle Public Library
The Submission
by Amy Waldman
Amy Waldman’s novel, The Submission, opens with a Manhattan jury’s charge to
Toolbox contents
choose a memorial for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Through a blind
admissions process, the jury is torn between two design finalists but eventually
About the Author
2
A Conversation with Amy Waldman
3
The Submission Discussion Questions
7
decides on the Garden, a four-square geometric design with a pavilion. When the
jury learns that the plan they selected was drafted by a young Muslim American
architect, Mohammad Khan, they know that their selection will unleash a firestorm
of controversy and they are proven right.
The story focuses on two central characters, Claire Burwell, the wife of a victim and
a memorial juror who fought for the selection of the Garden, and Mohammad Khan,
the stubborn, inscrutable architect who defends his design and his right, as an
Glossary of Islamic Terminology
8
Suggested Reading
9
American, to enter and win the project. A well-drawn cast of secondary characters
add their voices to create an atmosphere of urgency and controversy.
The Submission reveals the welter of emotions that America embodied in the
wake of the national tragedy. The author explores the complexity of emotional and
political response, the contradictions in identity politics, and how easily emotion
Seattle Reads
12
and prejudice can overwhelm rhetoric. Waldman’s debut, named Best Book of
2011 by Entertainment Weekly and Esquire, asks some hard questions about the
American values of tolerance, diversity, and community in the face of very real
challenges.
2011 Seattle Reads
1
About the Author
A Conversation with Amy Waldman
Amy Waldman was a reporter for
By Jonathan Derbyshire, Culture Editor, New Statesman
The New York Times for eight years,
Reprinted with permission
including three as co-chief of the New
Delhi bureau. She was also a national
Q: You’ve said that you came to feel that journalism didn’t offer the language to
correspondent for the Atlantic.
explore uncomfortable questions and emotions that lingered in the years after the
The Submission was named a New
attack. Why turn to fiction?
York Times Notable Book for 2011,
A: Fiction just has a lot more room for ambivalence and internal conflict,
one of NPR’s Ten Best Novels, Esquire’s
contradiction, and for me that sums up so much of what people felt after 9/11 -
Book of the Year, Entertainment
confusion even. And I think that’s hard to capture in journalism.
Washington Post Notable Fiction
Book, and one of Amazon’s Top 100
Books and top ten debut fiction. It
was a finalist for the Guardian (UK)
First Book Award. It has been or will
© Pieter M. Van Hattem
Weekly’s #1 Novel for the Year, a
be published in more than a dozen
countries. Waldman’s fiction also has appeared in the Atlantic, the Boston Review
Q: But that ambivalence didn’t really make it into public discourse in the immediate
aftermath of the attack did it?
A: No, and I think in general it rarely does because people want to present coherent
selves and want to draw coherent answers. And so it’s just not a form that lends
itself to that.
and the Financial Times, and was anthologized in The Best American Non-Required
Reading 2010.
Q: Was it always your plan to have the story told in the novel from multiple
She graduated from Yale University and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute
perspectives?
for Advanced Study and at the American Academy in Berlin. She lives with her
A: It was my plan from the beginning. After 9/11 I had an atypical and unusual
family in Brooklyn.
From the author’s website http://www.thesubmissionnovel.com/author
experience in being sort of catapulted from perspective to perspective. I was in
New York for six weeks after 9/11, reporting for the New York Times very intensely
on the aftermath and the grief and all of that, and then suddenly I was overseas in
places like Afghanistan, where your perspective broadens out to include from how
we as a country were reacting to it to the cost of the war we were waging.
I had a sense very early on of the victims’ families containing so many perspectives,
even though they were often talked about as a monolith. And so, it felt like it was
something that fiction could do. And it is a moral choice in the sense that I know
many readers, just like writers, have many positions or preconceptions, but I wanted
to try to force people outside of that pre-existing position and to inhabit, however
briefly, these different perspectives.
2
2012 Seattle Reads
2012 Seattle Reads
3
Q: There are moments in the novel when ambivalence itself becomes an explicit
theme: for example when you show liberal New Yorkers wrestling with some fairly
atavistic feelings towards Muslims and towards Islam in general - feelings they were
uncomfortable admitting to having.
Q: You’ve spoken about the Ground Zero Mosque; what about the 9/11 memorial?
A: To be honest I can’t evaluate it as a memorial until I visit it, which I haven’t done
yet. Just because I think looking at drawings, it’s impossible to tell what it’s like to
experience it. I am interested in our ever-growing instinct to memorialise on an ever
A: I knew from the beginning that that was something I wanted to capture,
grander scale. This idea of epic memorials - I’m not sure how I feel about that or
probably because it was so much of what I encountered. I finished a full draft of the
what’s driving it. So that complicates my feelings about this memorial. Just the very
novel before the controversy last year around the proposed mosque or community
idea of it I haven’t quite wrapped my mind around.
centre near Ground Zero, but I definitely did quite a bit of work on it after that. The
most surprising thing was not the virulent opposition to the project but talking to
liberal friends who, one minute, were saying “of course they have the right to build
Q: Where were you on 9/11?
it there,” and in the next conversation were saying “But I kind of just wish they
A: I had just gotten to the New York Times building and was in the lobby. People
wouldn’t, it would make me uncomfortable” or “But maybe it would be better if
were saying a plane had hit the World Trade Centre. By the time I got upstairs the
they moved it 12 blocks away.” And often they didn’t even recognise those were
second plane had hit. That whole day I was in the building taking reports from
contradictions.
people who were down there.
Q: You mentioned the controversy over the so-called Ground Zero mosque. When
Q: After 9/11 you were dispatched by the paper to South Asia weren’t you?
that blew up, how did you feel? You said you’d finished a draft of the novel already.
There’s the famous Philip Roth line about the American actuality always outdoing
A: They were sending people overseas to gauge the reaction to the attacks in
what you can do as a novelist . . .
different countries. I went to Iran. Then I was told by my editor to cross the border
A: I definitely felt some of that! For me, it was ironic, if that’s the right word, to
to Delhi for three years.
into Afghanistan, which I did. I spent quite a bit of time there and then was posted
have left journalism to go to fiction only to find myself overtaken by reality. On one
hand I felt prescient, and more just that the novel was touching on what was a very
live nerve in American society. For a couple of years before, I actually had started
to doubt if it would really be big deal if this guy won. But when the Ground Zero
Q: How do you think the 10th anniversary of the attacks will unfold? It’s taking
place, after all, in a fairly tense and toxic political atmosphere, what with the rise of
mosque controversy exploded, I thought, “no, I’m right.” And I think seeing that, it
the Tea Party and so on.
just gave me a much more vivid sense of the way something would play out.
A: I have to say I’m not a big anniversary person …. Some of it is just the media
going into overdrive - politicians as well. … I do feel that there’s this yearning to go
Q: We talked about your decision to make this a multiple-perspective novel. Did
you find some perspectives more difficult to write from than others?
back to that time because things were so clear. Right and wrong were very clear,
our victimhood was very clear. A lot of things have a gotten a lot murkier in the
subsequent decade.
A: I’d say I found them all fairly difficult. They were all so different from me and
so were very challenging. The one that took the longest to get right was Sean
Gallagher, the brother [of one of the victims]. Figuring out who he was just
happened in the writing. He would do something in a scene I wasn’t expecting and
that eventually became his nature. But in moving beyond the political position to
the actual human being, he took the most work.
4
2012 Seattle Reads
2012 Seattle Reads
5
Q: How many 9/11 novels have you read? Did you read any 9/11 novels before you
The Submission
started writing your own?
A: I read Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, I read Joseph O’Neill’s
Netherland - but to me, they’re not 9/11 novels. In The Emperor’s Children, 9/11
For Discussion
1. Why is Claire so enamored of the Garden design as opposed to the Void? Why
felt to me like a piece of the plot; the novel wasn’t wrestling with what 9/11 meant.
did the other jurors want the Void? What makes this decision so difficult even
And Netherland felt the same way. I liked both books a lot but I don’t see them as
before the architect’s name is revealed?
9/11 novels. In any case, my interest [when writing The Submission] was not in the
day itself but in the aftermath, our [America’s] trying to figure out who we are. So
I didn’t read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I didn’t
read DeLillo’s Falling Man.
2. Why does Mo refuse to discuss his beliefs, his reasons for submitting his
design, or his personal viewpoints? Is it better in some cases not to insist on
your civil rights?
3. What groups in American society are represented by the main characters in the
Q: It’s interesting that you question whether a novel like The Emperor’s Children
counts as a 9/11 novel. The haste with which critics label a book a “9/11 novel” is
significant and interesting in itself isn’t it?
A: Yeah. People make fun of me for saying this, but when I was working on my book
I wasn’t thinking of it as a 9/11 novel. I don’t think writers think in those categories you don’t sit down and say, “here’s my contribution to the 9/11 novel.” I don’t know
why critics are so eager to label things in that way.
novel? Which character(s) did you find most compelling? What could the main
characters have done differently to prevent friction and violence and promote a
better outcome?
4. Sean Gallagher is an active leader of the survivors group against the Memorial.
In a conversation with Chairman Paul Rubin, he asks, “what about my rights,
the families’ rights? The victim’s rights? Don’t they count for anything?” (p. 129)
Rubin responds by saying “emotions are not legal rights.” What are the rights
of survivors?
5. As the situation became heated, people looked for someone to blame to avoid
controversy. Who was blamed? How were the characters changed as a result?
6. What is the difference between tolerance and appeasement? Do you think the
jury was too tolerant?
7. Sean pulls off Zahira Hussain’s headscarf and inspires a ripple effect of similar
attacks; what drives him to pull her headscarf? Why does he apologize to her
later?
8. Compare Asma Anwar’s life to Laila Fathi’s. What are the similarities in their
struggles to fit in?
9. What is Asma’s place in the story? What is the meaning of the reference to
Asma being like a “performance act” (p. 243) — that her comments were so
perfectly timed, yet not all were even translated?
6
2012 Seattle Reads
2012 Seattle Reads
7
10. How does Waldman’s use of language enhance the emotional power of the
Suggested Reading
book? The central theme of this book is “submission” as the title suggests, in
just about every sense of the word. Discuss the title’s significance. What are
Fiction
Foer, Jonathan Safran (2006)
the parallels or differences between submission to one’s values and faith, and
al-Aswany, Alaa (2007)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
submitting to what is expected?
Chicago
11. The fear, intolerance, ignorance, and prejudice that emerge over the course
of the novel represent a cross-section of America two years after 9/11. How
has public feeling changed since 2003? Can you think of other, more recent
controversies that have erupted around similar issues?
12. The American values of safety, justice and peace were wounded nationwide, as
the characters prove. What will it take to heal our nation?
13. Why does the author take readers 20 years into the future, where “the country
The divergent views and beliefs of
Egyptian students and teachers at an
American medical school reach the
boiling point when their nation’s dictator
pays a visit.
Ballard, J.G. (2011)
Millennium People
Explosions rock the London streets as
had moved on, self corrected, as it always did, that feverish time almost
a cult of well-to-do liberal intelligentsia
forgotten” (p. 287)? How did Claire’s and Mo’s final decisions during the
rises up to protest their own ennui, in
Memorial uproar affect the outcome of their lives?
a trenchant satire on civilization and its
discontents.
Glossary of Islamic Terminology
Cleave, Chris (2009)
Adhan: Islamic call to prayer
Incendiary
Allah-hu akbar: God is the greatest
Assalamu alaikum: an Islamic greeting that means “peace be upon you”
Wa’alaikum asalam: “peace be upon you too” reply to greeting
Kalimah: Islamic holy verse and declaration of faith: (p. 28) “La ilaha illa allah,
Muhaammad rasulullah” means “I bear witness that there is no God but Allah, and
that Mohammad (peace be upon him) is his messenger”
bombing at a football match, a London
woman shares the surreal aftermath in a
letter to Osama Bin Laden.
DeLillo, Don (2007)
Falling Man
Eid-al-Adha: (p. 256) Islamic celebration that marks the Hajj Pilgrimage in Mecca
On 9/11 thousands of individual stories
Salat: Islamic prayer
converged and blew apart again in a
Ablution: (p. 28) cleansing and washing of oneself in preparation for prayer
widening arc. Survivor Keith Neudecker
Muezzin: (p. 281) the person who leads the call to prayer (adhan)
struggles to understand what he and his
Jihad (referred throughout the book): a holy struggle; usually means a struggle
within a person, for the sake of God (example: fasting, praying, etc.)
world have become.
Ramadhan: Islamic holy month of fasting
In Islam, “submission” to the will of god and the religion is very important. One
can submit oneself within the five pillars of Islam, which are: prayer, to make Hajj
pilgrimage, to fast during the month of Ramadhan, to recite the Kalimah (shadah),
and to give zakat (alms, obligatory money donation)
Note: page numbers refer to hardcover of The Submission
8
Her husband and son killed in a terrorist
2012 Seattle Reads
Dubus, Andre, III (1999)
House of Sand and Fog
The competing needs and dreams of an
American woman losing her grip and an
Iranian emigrant struggling for a foothold
When his father dies in the 9/11 attacks,
precocious nine-year-old Oskar Schell is
left with a mystery to solve, the answer to
which proves to be nothing less than the
meaning of life itself.
Hamid, Mohsin (2007)
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Pakistani-American Changez is shaken
to the core on 9/11, but the resulting
journey of conscience he makes is a
righteous path that he must walk alone.
McEwan, Ian (2005)
Saturday
London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne
sets out for a Saturday of playing squash,
seeing family and running errands – until
unexpected violence changes everything.
Miller, Sue (2010)
The Lake Shore Limited
Having lost her boyfriend on 9/11, Billy
writes a play that explores her own
guilty ambivalence, showing how art
can express and embody our complex
thoughts and feelings.
Ruff, Matt (2012)
The Mirage
Who can forget the events of 11/9/2001,
when American Christian fundamentalists
attacked the United Arab States? This
thought-provoking thriller by a Seattle
author holds a mirror up to madness.
rush ominously towards each other in this
tragic masterpiece of misunderstanding.
2012 Seattle Reads
9
Schwartz, Lynne Sharon (2005)
the immediacy and horror of the scene
Hingson and his guide dog Roselle, who
Maya Lin’s stunningly simple concept, two
The Writing on the Wall
around the World Trade Center Towers.
guided him down 78 stories and through
polished granite walls in the shape of a V,
the streets of New York filled with debris.
now stands on Washington’s Mall.
Muslims in America
Langewiesche, William (2002)
Smith, Dennis (2011)
A succinct history spanning centuries,
American Ground: Unbuilding the World
A Decade of Hope: Stories of Grief and
hitting the major chronological points and
Trade Center
Endurance from 9/11 Families and Friends
historical details of Muslims living in North
Langewiesche, with unrestricted access
Former firefighter Dennis Smith examines
America, and covering both Middle-
to Manhattan’s Ground Zero during
the lives of the 9/11 first responders, their
Eastern immigrant and American Muslims.
the post-September 11 cleanup, tells a
families, and the families of the victims,
monumental story, an intimate depiction
and how they have fared in the decade
of ordinary Americans reacting to grand-
since the tragedy.
Renata has had more than her share of
grief and loss, but more trauma starts as
she walks across the Brooklyn Bridge to
work and sees “a huge marigold bursting
open” as a plane crashes into the towers.
Nonfiction
Benfante, Michael (2011)
Curtis, Edward E. (2009)
Reluctant Hero: A 9/11 Survivor Speaks
Der Spiegel Magazine Reporters, Writers,
Out About That Unthinkable Day, What
and Editors (2001)
He’s Learned, How He’s Struggled, and
Inside 9-11: What Really Happened
What No One Should Ever Forget
A comprehensive account of the
Benfante — catapulted to hero
September 11 terrorist attacks, a chilling
Lewis, Bernard (2009)
9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda
status after he and a co-worker were
yet compelling study of the terrorists, their
Islam: The Religion and the People
Soufan was the FBI’s most knowledgeable
photographed carrying a woman in a
victims, and the loved ones left behind.
An accessible introduction to Muslims
special agent dealing with al-Qaeda’s
and their faith, which replaces dangerous
activities, and became the source of the
characterizations of Islam as an enemy
most useful actionable intelligence on this
with an understanding of Islam as a faith
terrorist organization. Purportedly, the
intimately connected to Christianity and
best and most original book published in
Judaism.
the West on al-Qaeda.
wheelchair down 68 floors and out of the
World Trade Center just minutes before
it imploded — tells his post-9/11 tale of
emotional and economic hardships, and
Dwyer, Jim (2005)
102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the
Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers
their worst.
Soufan, Ali H. (2011)
The Black Banners: The Inside Story of
the searing guilt of a survivor.
9/11 stories from the perspective of those
Bergen, Peter (2011)
moment the first plane hit at 8:46 a.m.
Mayer, Jane (2008)
Stern, Robin (2011)
The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict
to the collapse of the North Tower at
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How
Project Rebirth: Survival and the Strength
Between America and Al-Qaeda
10:28 a.m.
the War on Terror Turned into a War on
of the Human Spirit from 9/11 Survivors
American Ideals
A psychologist and a journalist examine
A dramatic account of how the United
the lives of nine people who were directly
States made terrible decisions in the
affected by the events of September
pursuit of terrorists around the world —
11, 2001, and whose lives were forever
decisions that violated the Constitution
changed by the tragedy.
inside the World Trade Center, from the
Bergen describes success and failure in
the “war on terror,” discussing Al-Qaeda’s Dyer, Geoff (2011)
The Missing of the Somme
misunderstanding of the West, and the
lessons that the U.S. military learned from A moving and thought-provoking
meditation on mourning, remembrance,
its mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
and how the memorials we erect shape
Clark, Mary Marshall, et al., editors (2011)
our collective memory of history and
After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember
tragedy, in this case World War I.
September 2001 and the Years That
Followed
Editors from Columbia University’s Oral
History Research Office present stories of
Hingson, Michael (2011)
Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind
Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of
the attacks and their aftermath, conveying Trust at Ground Zero
A memorable story of survival by Michael
10
scale tragedy at their best and sometimes
2012 Seattle Reads
and hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda.
Tulson, Jennifer Gardner (2011)
Scruggs, Jan C. (1985)
Where You Left Me
To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam
After losing her husband at the World
Veterans Memorial
Trade Center, Tulson gradually regained
A moving and inspiring account of the
her ability to love, and achieved a
inside story of the building of the Vietnam balance between grief and life-affirming
Veterans Memorial. Initially controversial,
determination.
2012 Seattle Reads
11
Seattle Reads
Featured Works
2011:
Little Bee by Chris Cleave (Simon and Schuster, 2010)
2010:
Secret Son by Laila Lalami (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009)
literature through reading and discussion. Each year the Library hosts an author for
2009:
My Jim by Nancy Rawles (Three Rivers Press, 2005)
a series of free programs. Prior to the visit, we develop a reading group toolbox and
2008:
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead encourage people throughout the region to read and discuss the featured book.
Books, 2007)
2007:
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner Books, 2003)
2006:
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Pantheon Books, 2003)
Reading Group Toolboxes
2005:
When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka (Anchor Books, 2002)
Reading group toolboxes, designed to enhance a book group’s discussion, are
2004:
Seattle Reads Isabel Allende
available at all Seattle Public Library locations, at many local bookstores, and online
My Invented Country (HarperCollins, 2003)
at www.spl.org.
City of the Beasts (HarperCollins, 2002)
Paula (HarperCollins, 1995)
The Infinite Plan (HarperCollins, 1993)
The Stories of Eva Luna (Atheneum, 1991)
Eva Luna (Knopf, 1988)
The House of the Spirits (Knopf, 1985)
The Seattle Public Library
Note: The 2004 series featured seven titles from Allende’s body of work
206-386-4636
2003:
A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead Books, 1999)
2002:
Wild Life by Molly Gloss (Mariner Books, 2001)
2001:
Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft by Bill Moyers (Morrow, 1999)
Washington Center for the Book at The Seattle Public Library
1999:
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines (Vintage Books, 1994)
[email protected]
1998:
The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks (HarperCollins, 1991)
The Washington Center for the Book at The Seattle Public Library invites everyone
to take part in “Seattle Reads,” a project designed to deepen engagement in
We also present a series of programs, film screenings, readings, and other events
around the themes of the featured work.
Books for Book Groups
The Washington Center for the Book lends hundreds of copies of the featured book
to book groups during the two months prior to the author’s visit. To request books
for your book group, e-mail [email protected].
www.spl.org
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter @splbuzz
Seattle Reads The Submission is made possible by The Seattle Public Library
Foundation and The Wallace Foundation, with additional support from media
sponsors The Seattle Times and KUOW 94.9 Public Radio, and Picador, The Elliott
Bay Book Co., University Book Store, and Seattle Central Community College.
12
2012 Seattle Reads
2012 Seattle Reads
2011
13
2012
Seattle Reads
For more information, contact:
Washington Center for the Book at The Seattle Public Library
1000 Fourth Ave. • Seattle, WA 98104
Chris Higashi, Program Manager
[email protected]
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter @splbuzz
Contributors to this toolbox include Jennifer Baker, Chris Higashi,
Linda Johns, Steve Kiesow, Tina Mat, Misha Stone, Brenda Tom, and
David Wright.
Seattle Reads The Submission is made possible by The Seattle Public
Library Foundation and The Wallace Foundation, with additional support
from media sponsors The Seattle Times and KUOW 94.9 Public Radio,
and Picador, The Elliott Bay Book Co., University Book Store, and Seattle
Central Community College