The gap in history—the burned dead place left by the conquerors—has been one of my most powerful muses. I have such a hankering to know what those kingdoms were like, and such an absurd nostalgia for places and people I’ve never seen, that I’ve set myself to the task of creating alternative mythologies like that of The Queen Jade.
The Queen Jade is filled with strong female protagonists who are (like the stereotypically drawn male characters of the genre) also driven by pride and ego. Are women more similar to men in this respect than is generally thought?
My husband would say, “Ummm … yes!” My take on it is that there are men who are nurturing and motherly, and women who are scary and gorgeous and powerful, and vice versa.
Still, with respect to the characters in my book, I’d say that a lot of them are high maintenance, but the one wonderful thing that connects them all is that they are really, really curious about the world. In The Queen Jade I am writing about a family filled with thinkers. And it was one of the most exciting things I’ve done, to conjure this clan of Latino geniuses who fling themselves through the Guatemalan rain forest! Jorge Luis Borges, the polyglot virtuoso, was definitely one of my models here. The Queen Jade’s protagonist, Lola Sanchez, is the owner of an adventure and fantasy-themed bookstore and a writer who knows a handful of languages, is an expert in etymology, and has committed an entire library of adventure novels to memory—absolutely a lady shaped on Borges, but with a pronounced hedonistic streak. Her mother, Juana Sanchez, is a UCLA archaeologist and master translator of Maya hieroglyphs—and she’s also a very imposing figure, something like a mixture of Einstein and Eva Peron and the Norse Brunhilde.
So, yes, these women are driven by pride, and the necessarily towering ego of the classic adventurer, but also curiosity, and even familial love.
You live in Los Angeles and don’t drive. Why? And please explain how you survive?
Apparently I am so busy conjuring alternative mytho-poetical histories of the ancient Maya that I can’t keep my mind focused on the road. So I tend to get into car accidents. Four big, bruising, ghastly ones, to be precise.
So before I killed anybody, I just gave up on the whole project. I’m married to Andrew Brown, a massively built Anglo prosecutor whom I met in law school. He is from Massachusetts and drives within the calamitous and moody Boston tradition, and so on any work day morning in question, if you’re in Los Angeles, and frozen in gridlock, you just might turn around and see next to you a large pale bald handsome man muttering unmentionables about your vehicular skills. And sitting right next to him will be a petite lady with scads of dark hair antically gesticulating as she waxes on about Gabriel García Márquez or Xena: Warrior Princess or the rituals of the Druids, or whatever’s on my mind at the moment.
You were once a child actress and beauty queen. You’re now an author of four novels and a professor of law. Please describe your life behind the camera. And did you really don a tiara?
Let us first get it straight that I was the winner of two child beauty contests, in the pre-Jon Benet Ramsey days. I was, one year running, the six-year-old Princess of Lakewood (the town in Southern California where I was born), and the year after, I catapulted up to the level of Queen of Lakewood, which meant that I did wear a sparkly little rhinestone hat and won a giant purple dinosaur and got to ride on a float with a very scrofulous-looking Ronald MacDonald (the burger chain must have sponsored the shindig).
We were all very proud. But not half so much as when I made my mark in Hollywood not one year after that, having quite a career playing Mexican victims in television series and miniseries. A Mexican victim is a character, often nameless, who gets caught in fires or car accidents (as I did when I appeared in the 1970s serial Emergency!), and screams something like “Ay, Mami!” just before she is swept away from disaster by the hero.
What I remember is that it paid really well. In addition, through my acting experiences, I was able to meet Kirk Douglas (who looked to me like Abe Lincoln), and also Fonzie. I was all set to make a go of a vocation as an ethnic sidekick on a sitcom when I got sidetracked by my love for books and school. Thank God!
A FEW WORDS ON WRITING THE QUEEN JADE
THE LEGEND OF THE QUEEN JADE is a work of fiction, but a few elements in the novel are based on modern and historical fact.
As most of us know, Guatemala suffered through a terrible civil war that raged from the 1960s until the 1996 signing of the peace accord between Marxist rebels and the army. According to the books and articles that I have studied, this conflict claimed the lives of 140,000 civilians, who suffered an unimaginable degree of pain and terror.
In the wake of this national trauma, Guatemala and the rest of Central American would weather another catastrophe when Hurricane Mitch tore through the region in the fall of 1998. The storm claimed the lives of upward of 100,000 people, and when I traveled to Guatemala in 2003, I learned that many people in the country are still feeling the effects of that disaster today. A significant number of Guatemalans lost their homes, infrastructure, access to potable water, and economic stability, which they have not regained.
The Queen Jade also touches on Guatemalan colonial history. Beatriz de la Cueva was the wife of Pedro de Alvarado, the sadistic Spanish conquistador and governor of Guatemala until his death in 1541. De la Cueva succeeded her husband to the seat of power, though her reign as governor only lasted for a brief period. Some historical accounts list her rulership as lasting for two days, others for several weeks, but in the end she died in La Ciudad Vieja, the sixteenth-century capital that sits a short distance form modern-day Antigua. In 1541 there was a tremendous rain-storm, and then a great earthquake hit the city; the earthquake caused a crack in the volcano Agua, which had been filled with water. De la Cueva died in that deluge.
Balaj K’waill comes from my imagination, but it bears mentioning that the Maya word for the god of “royal lineage bloodlines” is K’waill; through naming, then, I have indicated that Balaj K’waill is the deposed king of Guatemala when he meets the treacherous de la Cueva.
As for the codes in The Queen Jade: I have taken tremendous liberties with my ciphers. A much more scientific approach to the science of Maya writing will be found in Michael D. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code. The hieroglyphs that I reproduce in these pages, however, conform very closely to their given meanings. The sign
for example, means “lady,” “woman,” or “mother,” according to the Maya iconography. I have employed it to designate the identity of the queen.
For my studies of the hieroglyphs, I have found John Montgomery’s Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs invaluable. The images that illustrate my novel, and their meanings, are all taken from that glossary, with Mr. Montgomery’s generous permission.
The lighter side of HISTORY
* Look for this seal on select historical fiction titles from Harper. Books bearing it contain special bonus materials, including timelines, interviews with the author, and insights into the real-life events that inspired the book, as well as recommendations for further reading.
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About the Author
YXTA MAYA MURRAY is the author of The King’s Gold and The Conquest. The Conquest was a Barnes and Noble Discover pick and won a 1999 Whiting Award for fiction. Murray teaches law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
PRAISE FOR The Queen Jade
“You’d better get comfortable before you pick up this estrogen-laced Da Vinci Code: It’s a blood-pumping adventure you’ll read straight to the thrilling end.” —Glamour
“A breath-stopping, muscle-straining journey through the jungles of Central America. … Murray is quickly becoming to the action-adveture genre what Octavia E. Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin are to science fiction.” —El Paso Times
“In the finest tradition of adventure yarns …a rip-roaring page-turner that concludes with a satisfying twist.” —Booklist
“Meticulously researched.” —Kirkus Reviews
ALSO BY YXTA MAYA MURRAY
The King’s Gold
The Conquest
What It Takes to Get to Vegas
Locas
Copyright
HARPER
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Hippocrene Books for permission to reprint the hieroglyphs from John Montgomery’s Dictionary of Maya Hieroglyphs.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2005 by Rayo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE QUEEN JADE. Copyright © 2005 by Yxta Maya Murray.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03028-3
FIRST HAPER PAPERBACK PUBLISHED 2008.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Murray, Yxta Maya.
The queen jade: a novel/Yxta Maya Murray.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-058264-2 (acid-free paper)
1. Americans—Guatemala—Fiction. 2. Mayas—Antiquities—Fiction. 3. Archaeologists—Fiction. 4. Guatemala—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.U832Q44 2005
813’.54—dc22 2004051241
ISBN 978-0-06-058265-4 (pbk.)
08 09 10 11 12 DIX/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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