Spotlight on Bookstores: *A Secular Temple* guest post by Susan Jane Gilman

Susan Jane Gilman is the bestselling author of Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress and Kiss My Tiara, whose latest, acclaimed memoir, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven,is now out in paperback.  I’ve reviewed both the audiobook and print edition of Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, and highly recommend this unflinching memoir of Gillman’s tumultuous travels in Communist China.  For more information about the author, please visit Susan Jane Gilman’s blog, her Facebook fan page, or tune in to this fun and revealing interview on Blog Talk Radio.

Read on for another personal essay about finding solace in the midst of upheaval, as Gilman offers a poignant reminder that “none of us are in this world alone.”  You might want to grab a tissue ….

Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.: A Secular Temple

At first, I thought some daredevil had an accident.  When a colleague burst into my office saying “A plane just hit the World Trade Center,” I groaned.  Oh great. What kind of moron lost control of his Cessna?  Growing up in New York City, I’d seen the Twin Towers used for all sorts of stunts over the years– tight-rope walkers, marriage proposals.  Their success rates had been variable.

On September 11^th, 2001 I was living in Washington D.C.  It wasn’t until I switched on the television that I began to grasp the enormity of the situation.  That morning, my father was in Manhattan working in his office directly across the street from the World Trade Center.  I telephoned him: No one answered.  Then someone hurried past my door shouting, “They just hit the Pentagon and the State Department.”  Then someone else said that terrorists had hit the Old Executive Office Building.  My own office was only a few blocks away from the White House.  I grabbed my purse, and I ran.

Back home in my apartment, shivering and deranged with fear, it took me almost eight hours to learn that, back in Manhattan, my father was alive and well.  The Twin Towers had come down around him the street outside his office, but he’d crawled through the dust clouds and somehow made it to safety.  Others I knew of weren’t so lucky.

For two days after the attacks, I couldn’t sleep, eat, or function.  Fighter jets traversed the sky over D.C. at all hours.  The city was on red-alert.  But no one seemed to be in charge.  Where was the President? Where was our mayor?  What were we supposed to do?

When I refused to go to work for a third day, my husband said, “You have to get out of the house. Otherwise, the terrorists win.”

But where were we supposed to go? I cried.  No place felt safe any more.

Then, slowly, a feeling came over me, a homing instinct.  My husband and I put on our jackets and walked up Connecticut Avenue. 

Politics and Prose is famed as one of the biggest and best independent bookstores in America.  Certainly, whenever I publish a book, I insist on reading there.  It’s a big, homey, vibrant space taking up a third of the block on its stretch of Connecticut Avenue.  As with many bookstores, there’s a funky café, a children’s area, and a series of shelves dedicated to local book clubs and thoughtful “staff recommendations.”   It’s one of those (increasingly rare) “local institutions” where Washingtonians meet on a lazy Sunday afternoon pushing strollers and dressed in to jogging gear  to read the newspaper over coffee, catch up with friends, and spend hours browsing books.

Yet that evening in September, Politics and Prose became the scene of something far more profound. 

When we arrived, my husband and I found a whole crowd starting to convene.  Like us, our neighbors were shell-shocked and gravitating to the bookstore because it seemed like the only place of solace to go — the only place that they, too, wanted to be.

The owners of Politics and Prose had chairs set up, along with a microphone.  In the back of the store where book readings are usually held, people gathered and started to take turns spontaneously testifying. 

Some told of their personal losses.  Some were furious at the terrorists.  Some were furious at America for being so self-indulgent and naïve. Some were grieving for all of humanity.  Some were frightened and despairing.  Some were defiant.  Some were incredulous.  The emotions, hopes, and fears of an entire neighborhood – perhaps an entire people – were articulated there that night amid the bookshelves, themselves testaments to our civilization’s struggles and endurance. 

One man was a cab driver, an Arab immigrant.  He stood up and said that he hadn’t planned to come to the bookstore that evening; he was simply driving a customer who urged him to come inside.  “I said ‘no.’ I thought you would hate me because of what the terrorists have done,” he said tearily.  “But I see that you don’t.  Thank you for that.  I too am heartbroken over what happened.  I am so sorry.  I love America.”

Strangers hugged and reassured him.  After three days hunkered down alone in our fear and confusion, it was an enormous catharsis to be among fellow citizens – to come together in a place that wasn’t founded upon any particular dogma, heritage, ideology, elitism, or – as is often the case in Washington D.C. – political affiliation. 

Politics and Prose is what all bookstores endeavor to be: a secular temple. a community mainstay, a place of sustenance and hope.  For beyond its coffee, armchairs, and books, it offers something even greater: a reminder that none of us are in this world alone.  And certainly there, in the wake of September 11^th, we weren’t.