'On the Same Page' Community Reading Project Examines the Continuing Inner Turmoil of a Post 9/11 Society

“Something about the idea burrowed deep in me and didn’t leave.”

– Author Amy Waldman

The featured author of Cincinnati’s 2012 On the Same Page project visited the University of Cincinnati Monday evening, as UC’s Just Community and the Office of Student Affairs brought the community-wide reading program to campus.

In opening remarks, Mitchel D. Livingston, UC vice president for student affairs and chief diversity officer, said that UC has been an active participant through all 11 years of the On the Same Page program. “To have the opportunity to address the book, ‘The Submission,’ is indeed a special occasion for us,” Livingston said.

“The Submission” is the first novel for Amy Waldman, who worked for the New York Times for eight years and spent three years working as co-chief of The New York Times south Asia Bureau.

In 2001, Waldman was a city desk reporter for The New York Times and spent six weeks covering the response to the 9/11 attacks in New York City.  As her career took her overseas, including working in Afghanistan and Iran, she says the structure of the novel began to develop around the question of, “What is Islam?”

The fictional novel centers on a design submitted for a memorial – a blind competition decided by a jury that included a woman whose husband was killed in 9/11. The winning submission detailed a beautiful, walled garden that comes under suspicion as the identity of the designer, an American Muslim, is revealed. Questions are raised about whether the design is an Islamic garden.

Waldman revealed that a controversy from decades ago – erupting from the designer chosen for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. – inspired the novel. Maya Lin, an Asian-American from Athens, Ohio, was selected as designer for the memorial from a blind competition. Yet, controversy erupted over the memorial’s simple, unconventional design, as well as Lin being Asian-American.

In “The Submission,” Waldman says designer Mohammed Khan becomes defined as much or more by being an American Muslim, and the book reveals how he changes under that pressure.

Waldman calls the novel an alternative history, merging the personal and political. “Little is told of the emotional and intellectual turmoil that people can experience,” she said. The storyline takes place three years after the attacks and was published in 2011, a decade after the attacks.

Waldman says it took nearly four years to complete the novel, yet it reflected actual events that erupted in controversy in 2010, regarding plans by Muslim Americans for the construction of a community center about two-and-a-half blocks from Ground Zero.

“There was speculation and investigation into who these Muslims were,” she said, as the debate grew a local report into news that made international headlines. She says the same questions were at the heart of both controversies, her fictional novel and the controversy over the community center. “First, post 9/11, were Muslim Americans to be treated or regarded differently than other Americans, but also whether there had been created a new class of emotional rights that outweighed legal rights,” she said.

Waldman added that the novel never uses the words 9/11 or Ground Zero.

The novel was revered as one of NPR’s “Best 10 Novels” in 2011, as well as The New York Times “Most Notable Book” (2011), Entertainment Weekly’s “Favorite Novel of 2011,” and Esquire’s “2011 Book of the Year.”

The On the Same Page community-wide reading program is meant to enhance a sense of community, as well as foster dialogue and an appreciation of reading.

On the Same Page is a project of the Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County and is made possible in part by Friends of the Public Library, UC and Joseph-Beth Booksellers. Other partners include Xavier University, The College of Mount St. Joseph, the Edward B. Brueggeman Center for Dialogue, BRIDGES for a Just Community, the Mercantile Library, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Metro, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati. Media partners are 91.7 WVXU, the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cincinnati.com.

Book discussions related to On the Same Page will take place in Cincinnati through March.

Events calendar

On the Same Page website