Black Lives Matter, COVID, Wildfires, and Asteroids: An Interview with Yxta Maya Murray Regarding Her Novel, A History of Hazardous Objects
When I started writing fiction in 1998, I was a 39-year-old attorney specializing in land use and environmental law for the California Department of Justice. I did not have an MFA, but I did have a degree in English literature and a love for books that my parents instilled in all five of their children. One of the things I did to prepare myself for this new creative endeavor—while continuing to practice law—was to immerse myself in Chicanx writers who had created wonderful works of literature after I had graduated from college in 1981. One of those writers I explored was Yxta Maya Murray who had an added enticement for me because she was also a lawyer. I picked up her first novel, Locas (Grove/Atlantic), which centers on two young Chicanas living through gang violence in Echo Park. It became one of the most important inspirations for me as at started on my writer’s journey.
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After graduating from Stanford Law School and clerking with federal judges, Murry started teaching at Loyola Law School in 1995. Her novel, Locas, was published in 1997. Murray still teaches at Loyola as her writing career flourishes. She is not only a novelist, but also a short-story writer, art critic, playwright, and social practice artist. Murray is the author of ten books including, most recently, The World Doesn’t Work That Way, but It Could (University of Nevada Press), Art Is Everything (TriQuarterly Press), God Went Like That (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books), and We Make Each Other Beautiful: Art, Activism, and the Law (Cornell University Press). She has won a Whiting Award, an Art Writer's Grant, the 2024-2025 Blackwell Prize in Writing, and is a 2024-2025 fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.
Murray’s latest novel is A History of Hazardous Objects (University of Nevada Press), published this fall. At the novel’s center is a radar astronomer, Laura de León, and her family as they wrestle with personal challenges posed by the pandemic, Black Lives Matters protests following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as the Bobcat Fire that sweeps through the San Fernando Valley. Murray’s precise eye for quotidian detail coupled with her ability to humanize global turmoil make this novel both deeply personal and profoundly universal. Murray is a captivating storyteller at the top of her game. Murray made time from her busy schedule to discuss her new book and the creative process. DANIEL A. OLIVAS: When did you first learn of Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs) and what inspired you to create a protagonist who studies them? Did you do extensive research into PHOs? |
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YXTA MAYA MURRAY: I began this book during the fall of 2020 when many events that I describe in the novel were happening: We were in the depths of the pre-vaccine pandemic, my community was protesting the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, and wildfires were raging through Southern California. I, like so many people, was filled with fear and concern, and I began to think about what it might take to feel safe. I became interested in the construction of shelters, hideaways, and shields, and this research led me to the work of Robert E. Gold, who works in applied physics at Johns Hopkins. He had designed a shield system to protect against significant hazardous objects such as the large asteroids and comets that have either hit “nearby” planets or have hit or appear to be within the potential orbit of earth. I had never given much thought to asteroids or comets, but as I began researching the issue, I learned about meteorites (asteroids which hit the earth) or fireballs such as (1) the one that either exploded overhead or actually hit the earth in Tunguska, Siberia, in 1908, (2) the asteroid Apophis, which some scientists have cautioned us about, and also (3) Shoemaker-Levy 9, the gigantic comet that split into 13 pieces and hit Jupiter in 1992. I then began looking into scientists who have made important discoveries or invented important theories about asteroids—Leonid Kulik, Gerald Wasserburg, Luis Alvarez, and Roy A. Tucker—and found that they’d all fought in larger wars in the 20th century, and had either killed people or faced down being killed themselves by projectiles—bullets, bombs. From these seeds the novel began.
OLIVAS: Your novel is set at the beginning of the pandemic and lockdowns which—for me as a reader—brought up rather vivid and disturbing memories of that time. Could you talk about memorializing in fiction this difficult period in our world’s history?
MURRAY: At the time, there was this piece of received wisdom floating around that novelists shouldn’t write a “Covid book” for a while—Sloane Crosby wrote as much in the New York Times on March 17, 2020. But I started mine in September 2020. I was writing my way through a question, which is whether tragedy and trauma just break us down and make us weaker and meaner or whether we can engage these experiences to be smarter, and gentler, and kinder. The examples of the scientists I mentioned above became important for this project because they either killed people or had come close to death themselves because of wartime airborne projectiles (from the Russo-Japanese war to the Vietnam War) and then, after those experiences, began to look up at the sky with curiosity, and wound up making discoveries. Guilt and terror became central emotions and inheritances that drove scientific progress. Their examples helped me see that trauma can help lead to insight, new sight—a new path. The one counter example also illustrated in the novel is the case of Ann Hodges, who is (as far as I know) the only human being to be hit by a meteorite and have that event recorded. She was hit by a nine-pound meteorite while she napped in her home in Eastern Alabama in 1954, and she suffered mentally as a result of the aftermath of that impact—probably in part because of the intense media scrutiny. So, as I was observing these fires, and the horrors of police violence on Black and Brown people, and looking at the death tolls from Covid, I was wondering whether I personally would emerge from the experience with some additional wisdom or whether I’d be left at a loss; and I also wondered this about our society. It’s still a question that I’m grappling with.
OLIVAS: Woven into your narrative are the Black Lives Matters protests following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as the Bobcat Fire that sweeps through the San Fernando Valley. Could police brutality and climate change be considered forms of Potentially Hazardous Objects? If so, how are they different from the asteroids and comets that normally make up that category of threats to our wellbeing?
MURRAY: Yes, state violence against people of color and ecological disaster are versions of hazardous objects or events. One of the issues I’m dealing with in the novel is how the government should react to threats that seem remote or unrealistic to those in power—for a long time, asteroids haven’t been much on the national radar, so to speak. When is something recognized as an emergency and as really dangerous and when is it brushed off? One asteroid researcher named Eleanor Helin once said that the government wouldn’t take the threat of meteorites seriously until we had a big impact. When we’re talking about the fears of people of color regarding state violence, these have been rejected or sidelined or ignored for a long time—not because of scientific ignorance, of course but because of white supremacy. What does it take for a state to recognize the real danger experienced by people of color? In the case of the U.S., it took May of 2020 and the creative, vocal, and energized protests that we saw overtaking not only our country but also the world. Hopefully that message will continue to be heard.
OLIVAS: At the center of your novel is a radar astronomer, Laura de León, and her family as they struggle through personal challenges in the midst of the pandemic and social unrest. Could you discuss your creation of these characters and how they developed as you wrote your novel?
MURRAY: I wanted to write a novel about a good person and a good family who were doing their best during September 2020. I wanted to write about love and caring in a family of color and think about how they would get through their day to day. Some of the book is so granular because I noticed how, during the lockdowns, time seemed to slow down, and little actions and gestures took on greater weight because those of us who were housed were just in our houses, dithering and worrying and making decisions. Much of the book concentrates on the sacraments of the domestic—making food, tending to the ill—and the characters are all doing everything they can to be there for, and love, each other.
OLIVAS: You illustrate your novel with historical photographs as well as artwork. What inspired you to design your manuscript in this way, and what do you hope readers will get from this visual aspect of your storytelling?
MURRAY: The book is in part about the irrepressibility of the impulse to make art, even in times of tragedy. Laura doesn’t consider herself an artist, but her mother is, and visuals and storytelling turn out to be important modes of communication that develop in the characters’ home during the pandemic. Laura herself discovers that she’s a storyteller, who also has some talent at drawing. I suppose that, in engaging these ideas, I was reflecting on what I was doing myself, which was making art during the lockdowns.
OLIVAS: Your novel is set at the beginning of the pandemic and lockdowns which—for me as a reader—brought up rather vivid and disturbing memories of that time. Could you talk about memorializing in fiction this difficult period in our world’s history?
MURRAY: At the time, there was this piece of received wisdom floating around that novelists shouldn’t write a “Covid book” for a while—Sloane Crosby wrote as much in the New York Times on March 17, 2020. But I started mine in September 2020. I was writing my way through a question, which is whether tragedy and trauma just break us down and make us weaker and meaner or whether we can engage these experiences to be smarter, and gentler, and kinder. The examples of the scientists I mentioned above became important for this project because they either killed people or had come close to death themselves because of wartime airborne projectiles (from the Russo-Japanese war to the Vietnam War) and then, after those experiences, began to look up at the sky with curiosity, and wound up making discoveries. Guilt and terror became central emotions and inheritances that drove scientific progress. Their examples helped me see that trauma can help lead to insight, new sight—a new path. The one counter example also illustrated in the novel is the case of Ann Hodges, who is (as far as I know) the only human being to be hit by a meteorite and have that event recorded. She was hit by a nine-pound meteorite while she napped in her home in Eastern Alabama in 1954, and she suffered mentally as a result of the aftermath of that impact—probably in part because of the intense media scrutiny. So, as I was observing these fires, and the horrors of police violence on Black and Brown people, and looking at the death tolls from Covid, I was wondering whether I personally would emerge from the experience with some additional wisdom or whether I’d be left at a loss; and I also wondered this about our society. It’s still a question that I’m grappling with.
OLIVAS: Woven into your narrative are the Black Lives Matters protests following the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as the Bobcat Fire that sweeps through the San Fernando Valley. Could police brutality and climate change be considered forms of Potentially Hazardous Objects? If so, how are they different from the asteroids and comets that normally make up that category of threats to our wellbeing?
MURRAY: Yes, state violence against people of color and ecological disaster are versions of hazardous objects or events. One of the issues I’m dealing with in the novel is how the government should react to threats that seem remote or unrealistic to those in power—for a long time, asteroids haven’t been much on the national radar, so to speak. When is something recognized as an emergency and as really dangerous and when is it brushed off? One asteroid researcher named Eleanor Helin once said that the government wouldn’t take the threat of meteorites seriously until we had a big impact. When we’re talking about the fears of people of color regarding state violence, these have been rejected or sidelined or ignored for a long time—not because of scientific ignorance, of course but because of white supremacy. What does it take for a state to recognize the real danger experienced by people of color? In the case of the U.S., it took May of 2020 and the creative, vocal, and energized protests that we saw overtaking not only our country but also the world. Hopefully that message will continue to be heard.
OLIVAS: At the center of your novel is a radar astronomer, Laura de León, and her family as they struggle through personal challenges in the midst of the pandemic and social unrest. Could you discuss your creation of these characters and how they developed as you wrote your novel?
MURRAY: I wanted to write a novel about a good person and a good family who were doing their best during September 2020. I wanted to write about love and caring in a family of color and think about how they would get through their day to day. Some of the book is so granular because I noticed how, during the lockdowns, time seemed to slow down, and little actions and gestures took on greater weight because those of us who were housed were just in our houses, dithering and worrying and making decisions. Much of the book concentrates on the sacraments of the domestic—making food, tending to the ill—and the characters are all doing everything they can to be there for, and love, each other.
OLIVAS: You illustrate your novel with historical photographs as well as artwork. What inspired you to design your manuscript in this way, and what do you hope readers will get from this visual aspect of your storytelling?
MURRAY: The book is in part about the irrepressibility of the impulse to make art, even in times of tragedy. Laura doesn’t consider herself an artist, but her mother is, and visuals and storytelling turn out to be important modes of communication that develop in the characters’ home during the pandemic. Laura herself discovers that she’s a storyteller, who also has some talent at drawing. I suppose that, in engaging these ideas, I was reflecting on what I was doing myself, which was making art during the lockdowns.
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