Commemorating Not Commercializing -- Booksellers Plan for September 11 Anniversary

The upcoming anniversary of the September 11 tragedies will be marked in bookstores with an emphasis on helping people to mourn the disastrous events and, also, according to many booksellers around the country, on offering opportunities for healing and education. Any attempts to use the anniversary as a self-serving marketing tool made all booksellers extremely uncomfortable. Many opted for in-store events that included both speakers who have had personal experience with the disasters and others who have analyzed the events or have attempted to find solutions.

Mitch Brown, general manager of Kramerbooks in Washington, D.C., told BTW that the store would carry on business as usual, encouraging customers and other members of the community to take advantage of the wide range of opinions offered in an independent bookstore like Kramerbooks.

While Jim Gannon, owner of Old Sperryville Bookshop in Sperryville, Virginia, said emphatically that "our plan is to be closed and fly our flag at half-staff…. There will be an enormous amount of media overplay of the anniversary and lots of people will be turned off by the hype. We want no part of it."

Catherine Bohne, whose Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, New York, became a refuge and action center immediately following the World Trade Center attacks, would like the store's commemoration to evolve organically from the neighborhood's needs, as it did one year ago. (Click here for full story of how the store worked with its community last year.)

Bohne told BTW: "I don't know if you know what happened here last year… a lot of people spent a lot of time here on the 11th. We didn't know what to do, except wait, and we built a little shrine with candles and flowers. The whole floor ended up covered in votive candles. I think we're going to rebuild the shrine. We're open to whatever….We don't want to forget what happened, but I want to concentrate on how we go forward, rather than rage about what happened."

At Three Lives & Co., a Manhattan bookstore one and a half miles from Ground Zero, owner Toby Cox expressed his ambivalence about the store's role in remembering the day: "I don't have any plans for it…. There's enough going on. The store was a place to escape on September 11, 2001, and it may be that again. I hate to use the word escape, but a place to get away from that. I couldn't get to the store on September 11 because I live in Brooklyn, but I opened the day after. I felt a little awkward doing that too -- am I being a cheap capitalist? But so many customers thanked me for being open."

Cox said that the store's proximity to Ground Zero makes it possible for customers to acknowledge the anniversary in many ways: "It's a fine balance. Yes, I want to remember -- I'm a New Yorker. But, you don't want to be commercializing it, either. I'm sure that the customers of Three Lives may have their own ways of commemorating it."

Bookends of Ridgewood, New Jersey, in Bergen County, which lost over 100 residents, has held a series of events commemorating the heroism of the firefighters who responded on 9/11. Author David Halberstam and, most recently, author and former New York City Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen spoke at the store. Those in attendance included many New Jersey firefighters who had rushed to Manhattan to help and employees in the Word Trade Center area who had been safely evacuated. On September 12, the store will hold an event featuring author Terry Golway, whose father, father-in-law, godfather, and uncles were all firefighters.

Several booksellers are choosing to mark the day with programs and events that contribute both spiritually and financially to the healing process for those directly involved in the events of September 11, as well as the general public.

Judy Wheeler of Towne Center Books in Pleasanton, California, told BTW that a planned prayer bead workshop with Eleanor Wiley, author of a book on the subject, happened to fall on September 11. "It seemed to fit so we kept it," Wheeler said. "I think learning about making and using prayer beads will be a great way to spend the evening."

At Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina, Rev. Camille Yorkey, a Raleigh Methodist minister who was called to provide crisis counseling to families of victims of the attacks and chronicled her experiences in a book, will speak at the store on September 9.

The Bookstore in Warwick, New York, a community 65 miles northwest of New York City, will donate all the profits from the store's sales on September 11 to the Warwick World Trade Center Memorial, which will honor the eight local residents who died one year ago.

Malaprop's Bookstore/Café, in Asheville, North Carolina, will hold a gathering to share excerpts from the locally produced CD, Voice Like a Hammer -- Poets Shaping Change. A store-sponsored poetry forum, held a few days after September 11, produced the anthology of local poets' work, which is included on the CD.

Also presenting voices of writers is Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. On September 11, author E.J. Dionne will moderate the program entitled "September 11 -- A Year Remembered." Among those scheduled to participate are Howard Norman, Jane Shore, E. Ethelbert Miller, Linda Pastan, Akbar Ahmed, Rick Atkinson, Jennifer Toth, Myra Sklarew, Alexandra Zapruder, and Neil Lewis. These writers and others will form the store's community memorial.

Cleve Corner, the store's events coordinator, told BTW that between 250 and 300 people would likely attend the event. "A year ago, the store became a place of reflection. Being in Washington (on September 11) so close to it, it's devastating. Everything stopped, and, then, neighbors started looking at each other eye to eye and people were more willing to find out what was going on next door. It gave rise to more of a sense of community, and we feel strongly that Politics & Prose is a community bookstore. The writers speaking are our friends, part of that community here. Ever since the attacks last year, people have been here looking for answers, and we offer whatever resources we can. If people need a place to be -- our doors are open.

Looking to the future figures prominently into the day's plan at That Bookstore in Blytheville, in Blytheville, Arkansas. Owner Mary Gay Shipley told BTW that the store "will be encouraging potential voters to register on 9/11." She noted that "nothing would show greater support for our form of government than increased participation in the election process." -- Nomi Schwartz with David Grogan