THE SUBMISSION by AMY WALDMAN

Seattle Reads

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 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 A Conversation with Amy Waldman 3 of controversy and they are proven right.

The story focuses on two central characters, Claire Burwell, the wife of a victim and The Submission Discussion Questions 7 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 American, to enter and win the project. A well-drawn cast of secondary characters Glossary of Islamic Terminology 8 add their voices to create an atmosphere of urgency and controversy.

The Submission reveals the welter of emotions that America embodied in the Suggested Reading 9 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. Weekly’s #1 Novel for the Year, a Washington Post Notable Fiction Book, and one of Amazon’s Top 100 Q: But that ambivalence didn’t really make it into public discourse in the immediate Books and top ten debut fiction. It aftermath of the attack did it? was a finalist for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award. It has been or will A: No, and I think in general it rarely does because people want to present coherent © Pieter Hattem M. Van be published in more than a dozen selves and want to draw coherent answers. And so it’s just not a form that lends countries. Waldman’s fiction also has appeared in the Atlantic, the Boston Review 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. experience in being sort of catapulted from perspective to perspective. I was in

From the author’s website http://www.thesubmissionnovel.com/author 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 Q: You’ve spoken about the Ground Zero Mosque; what about the 9/11 memorial? theme: for example when you show liberal New Yorkers wrestling with some fairly A: To be honest I can’t evaluate it as a memorial until I visit it, which I haven’t done atavistic feelings towards Muslims and towards Islam in general - feelings they were yet. Just because I think looking at drawings, it’s impossible to tell what it’s like to uncomfortable admitting to having. 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 Q: Where were you on 9/11? liberal friends who, one minute, were saying “of course they have the right to build 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 into Afghanistan, which I did. I spent quite a bit of time there and then was posted A: I definitely felt some of that! For me, it was ironic, if that’s the right word, to to Delhi for three years. 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 Q: How do you think the 10th anniversary of the attacks will unfold? It’s taking to doubt if it would really be big deal if this guy won. But when the Ground Zero 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 back to that time because things were so clear. Right and wrong were very clear, you find some perspectives more difficult to write from than others? 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? For Discussion 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 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 2. Why does Mo refuse to discuss his beliefs, his reasons for submitting his day itself but in the aftermath, our [America’s] trying to figure out who we are. So design, or his personal viewpoints? Is it better in some cases not to insist on I didn’t read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I didn’t your civil rights? read DeLillo’s Falling Man. 3. What groups in American society are represented by the main characters in the novel? Which character(s) did you find most compelling? What could the main Q: It’s interesting that you question whether a novel like The Emperor’s Children characters have done differently to prevent friction and violence and promote a counts as a 9/11 novel. The haste with which critics label a book a “9/11 novel” is better outcome? significant and interesting in itself isn’t it? 4. Sean Gallagher is an active leader of the survivors group against the Memorial. A: Yeah. People make fun of me for saying this, but when I was working on my book In a conversation with Chairman Paul Rubin, he asks, “what about my rights, I wasn’t thinking of it as a 9/11 novel. I don’t think writers think in those categories - the families’ rights? The victim’s rights? Don’t they count for anything?” (p. 129) you don’t sit down and say, “here’s my contribution to the 9/11 novel.” I don’t know Rubin responds by saying “emotions are not legal rights.” What are the rights why critics are so eager to label things in that way. 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 When his father dies in the 9/11 attacks, The divergent views and beliefs of precocious nine-year-old Oskar Schell is 11. The fear, intolerance, ignorance, and prejudice that emerge over the course Egyptian students and teachers at an left with a mystery to solve, the answer to of the novel represent a cross-section of America two years after 9/11. How American medical school reach the which proves to be nothing less than the has public feeling changed since 2003? Can you think of other, more recent boiling point when their nation’s dictator meaning of life itself. controversies that have erupted around similar issues? pays a visit. Hamid, Mohsin (2007) 12. The American values of safety, justice and peace were wounded nationwide, as Ballard, J.G. (2011) The Reluctant Fundamentalist the characters prove. What will it take to heal our nation? Millennium People Pakistani-American Changez is shaken 13. Why does the author take readers 20 years into the future, where “the country Explosions rock the London streets as to the core on 9/11, but the resulting had moved on, self corrected, as it always did, that feverish time almost a cult of well-to-do liberal intelligentsia journey of conscience he makes is a forgotten” (p. 287)? How did Claire’s and Mo’s final decisions during the rises up to protest their own ennui, in righteous path that he must walk alone. a trenchant satire on civilization and its Memorial uproar affect the outcome of their lives? McEwan, Ian (2005) discontents. Saturday Glossary of Islamic Terminology Cleave, Chris (2009) London neurosurgeon Henry Perowne sets out for a Saturday of playing squash, Adhan: Islamic call to prayer Incendiary Her husband and son killed in a terrorist seeing family and running errands – until Allah-hu akbar: God is the greatest bombing at a football match, a London unexpected violence changes everything. Assalamu alaikum: an Islamic greeting that means “peace be upon you” woman shares the surreal aftermath in a Wa’alaikum asalam: “peace be upon you too” reply to greeting Miller, Sue (2010) letter to Osama Bin Laden. The Lake Shore Limited 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 DeLillo, Don (2007) Having lost her boyfriend on 9/11, Billy that Mohammad (peace be upon him) is his messenger” Falling Man writes a play that explores her own Eid-al-Adha: (p. 256) Islamic celebration that marks the Hajj Pilgrimage in Mecca On 9/11 thousands of individual stories guilty ambivalence, showing how art Salat: Islamic prayer converged and blew apart again in a can express and embody our complex Ablution: (p. 28) cleansing and washing of oneself in preparation for prayer widening arc. Survivor Keith Neudecker thoughts and feelings. struggles to understand what he and his Muezzin: (p. 281) the person who leads the call to prayer (adhan) Ruff, Matt (2012) world have become. Jihad (referred throughout the book): a holy struggle; usually means a struggle The Mirage within a person, for the sake of God (example: fasting, praying, etc.) Dubus, Andre, III (1999) Who can forget the events of 11/9/2001, Ramadhan: Islamic holy month of fasting House of Sand and Fog when American Christian fundamentalists In Islam, “submission” to the will of god and the religion is very important. One The competing needs and dreams of an attacked the United Arab States? This can submit oneself within the five pillars of Islam, which are: prayer, to make Hajj American woman losing her grip and an thought-provoking thriller by a Seattle pilgrimage, to fast during the month of Ramadhan, to recite the Kalimah (shadah), author holds a mirror up to madness. and to give zakat (alms, obligatory money donation) Iranian emigrant struggling for a foothold rush ominously towards each other in this Note: page numbers refer to hardcover of The Submission tragic masterpiece of misunderstanding. 8 2012 Seattle Reads 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, Renata has had more than her share of the streets of New York filled with debris. now stands on Washington’s Mall. Curtis, Edward E. (2009) grief and loss, but more trauma starts as Muslims in America Langewiesche, William (2002) Smith, Dennis (2011) she walks across the Brooklyn Bridge to A succinct history spanning centuries, American Ground: Unbuilding the World A Decade of Hope: Stories of Grief and work and sees “a huge marigold bursting hitting the major chronological points and Trade Center Endurance from 9/11 Families and Friends open” as a plane crashes into the towers. historical details of Muslims living in North Langewiesche, with unrestricted access Former firefighter Dennis Smith examines Nonfiction 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, Benfante, Michael (2011) monumental story, an intimate depiction and how they have fared in the decade Reluctant Hero: A 9/11 Survivor Speaks Der Spiegel Magazine Reporters, Writers, of ordinary Americans reacting to grand- since the tragedy. Out About That Unthinkable Day, What and Editors (2001) scale tragedy at their best and sometimes He’s Learned, How He’s Struggled, and Inside 9-11: What Really Happened Soufan, Ali H. (2011) their worst. What No One Should Ever Forget A comprehensive account of the The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 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 wheelchair down 68 floors and out of the and their faith, which replaces dangerous activities, and became the source of the Dwyer, Jim (2005) World Trade Center just minutes before characterizations of Islam as an enemy most useful actionable intelligence on this 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the it imploded — tells his post-9/11 tale of with an understanding of Islam as a faith terrorist organization. Purportedly, the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers emotional and economic hardships, and intimately connected to Christianity and best and most original book published in 9/11 stories from the perspective of those the searing guilt of a survivor. Judaism. the West on al-Qaeda. inside the World Trade Center, from the 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 Bergen describes success and failure in American Ideals A psychologist and a journalist examine Dyer, Geoff (2011) the “war on terror,” discussing Al-Qaeda’s A dramatic account of how the United the lives of nine people who were directly The Missing of the Somme misunderstanding of the West, and the States made terrible decisions in the affected by the events of September A moving and thought-provoking lessons that the U.S. military learned from pursuit of terrorists around the world — 11, 2001, and whose lives were forever meditation on mourning, remembrance, its mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq. decisions that violated the Constitution changed by the tragedy. and how the memorials we erect shape and hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. Clark, Mary Marshall, et al., editors (2011) our collective memory of history and Tulson, Jennifer Gardner (2011) After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember tragedy, in this case World War I. Scruggs, Jan C. (1985) Where You Left Me September 2001 and the Years That To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam After losing her husband at the World Hingson, Michael (2011) Followed Veterans Memorial Trade Center, Tulson gradually regained Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Editors from Columbia University’s Oral A moving and inspiring account of the her ability to love, and achieved a Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of History Research Office present stories of inside story of the building of the Vietnam balance between grief and life-affirming Trust at Ground Zero the attacks and their aftermath, conveying Veterans Memorial. Initially controversial, determination. A memorable story of survival by Michael

10 2012 Seattle Reads 2012 Seattle Reads 11 Seattle Reads Featured Works 2011: Little Bee by Chris Cleave (Simon and Schuster, 2010) The Washington Center for the Book at The Seattle Public Library invites everyone 2010: Secret Son by Laila Lalami (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009) to take part in “Seattle Reads,” a project designed to deepen engagement in 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) We also present a series of programs, film screenings, readings, and other events 2007: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner Books, 2003) around the themes of the featured work. 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) Books for Book Groups The Infinite Plan (HarperCollins, 1993) The Washington Center for the Book lends hundreds of copies of the featured book The Stories of Eva Luna (Atheneum, 1991) to book groups during the two months prior to the author’s visit. To request books for your book group, e-mail [email protected]. 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) www.spl.org 2002: Wild Life by Molly Gloss (Mariner Books, 2001) Follow us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter @splbuzz 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)

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.

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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.