Elizabeth Lim’s second novel in the Blood
of Stars series, “Unravel the Dusk,” reaches
deep into your prefrontal cortex and implants
a strong desire to embroider and to create. She
makes sewing exciting, infusing time consum-
ing, mundane tasks with danger, dignity and
purpose.
In the world of “Unravel the Dusk,” embroi-
dery and tailoring is regarded and honored as
capital-A Art. The highest title of Master Tailor
is reserved only for accomplished men. Women,
while able to practice the craft, are hampered by
sexism. In the first book, “Spin the Dawn,” Maia
rebels against the status quo.
Taught by her aged father, once a Master
Tailor, Maia struggles to keep her family shop
open after her brothers are drafted into war.
After the war ends, Maia has two dead brothers,
a crippled brother and a fragile father. When
her father is called upon by the emperor to craft
clothing for the future empress. Maia worries
that her father would not survive the arduous
trip. To save what remains of her broken family,
Maia passes herself off as her brother and goes
to the capital in her father’s place. If her decep-
tion is discovered, Maia would be executed.
Aided by a divine pair of heirloom shears,
Maia undergoes three trials to do the impos-
sible. Maia must retrieve divine materials to
craft three legendary dresses: one from the
laughter of the sun, one from the tears of the
moon and one from the blood of the stars.
Edan, the emperor’s enchanter, assists her as
they travel to the far-flung corners of the land.
Edan is revealed to be a jinn, a magician turned
genie, bound to a thousand years of servitude.
He serves as Maia’s love interest and as a prime
example of Lim’s cross-cultural exchanges.
While the Blood of Stars duology focuses on a
single kingdom, the world Lim creates is vast.
She allows Chinese folktale and Persian mythol-
ogy to interact and exist side by side. Jinn magic
is not native to the Sino-inspired kingdom; thus,
Edan is introduced as an enchanter. The cultur-
al diffusion recalls historical cultural diffusion
that occurred because of trade routes like the
Silk Road. The small details help anchor Lim’s
fantasy world and lends it verisimilitude.
In the second book of the series, Lim focuses
more on developing a tight narrative and less on
lateral world building. Court politics takes cen-
ter stage, with Maia attempting to uphold the
tenuous peace and her own sanity. In the first
book, the three divine dresses serve as Maia’s
questing goal. They are mythic and unattain-
able yet vital to preserving peace. In the second
book, Maia’s central conflict is within herself.
She no longer needs to continue crafting with
the threat of life or death. Maia already peaked
in her tailoring career.
At the conclusion of the first book, the King-
dom plunges back into war with the rebel com-
mander, aided by demonic forces. Maia must
rally her allies to combat the demonic threat.
Thus, in “Unravel the Dawn,” Maia is less a
seamstress and more a demon, an agent of war.
While crafting takes up less space in the sec-
ond novel, “Unravel the Dawn” still reminds us
that there is dignity in working with our hands,
producing labors of love, beauty and sweat. Hav-
ing fewer crafting moments was disappointing
but Maia’s character transition from creator to
destroyer was exciting to read.
Throughout the Blood of Stars duology,
Elizabeth Lim unflaggingly stresses the magic
of beautiful art and trade skills while bringing
the suspense and drama. She depicts a robust
world, fraught with political and social tension.
For Maia, sewing is not compliance with the
patriarchy. Rather, every stitch is a rebellion,
a stand against the patriarchal status quo and
looming demonic powers.
6
Thursday, July 2, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
SUMMER SERIES
SUMMER SERIES
My mother’s copy of
‘The Bluest Eye’
When my mother was in college, she would
spend hours at the campus bookstore. She
would browse the stacks of books assigned for
literature classes that she was not taking. She
would spend her money buying other people’s
mandatory reading, and later would fall in love
with the books she found.
This was how she came across Toni Mor-
rison and “The Bluest Eye,” and how I came
to find it in my bookshelf. I asked her why she
never actually took these literature classes,
especially when I realized that numerous
books left to me were a result of her bookstore
prowl, and her answer was simple. She didn’t
like the analysis of the books, much like her
disdain for the analysis of poetry. She couldn’t
ever derive the deeper meaning of what she
thought to be insignificant details, and she
did not care to delve into the motifs of revered
classics. It would strip her of the enjoyment of
these books and discourage her reading habits.
So when she read “The Bluest Eye,” she was
only privy to her own interpretations. “It was
a punch to the gut.”
Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, the book begins
with narration by Claudia MacTeer, a woman
describing events that happened around the
time she was nine years old. That fall, her
young friend Pecola was having her father’s
baby. Claudia recollects how she and her sister
Frieda planted marigolds in hopes that their
success would signify the health of Pecola and
her baby. But they did not bloom. No marigolds
bloomed that fall in Lorain, and Pecola’s baby
did not survive. “What is clear now is that of all
of that hope, fear, lust, love and grief, nothing
remains but Pecola and the unyielding earth.”
The autumn the year prior, Claudia’s family
had taken in Pecola temporarily after her father
tried to burn down the family home. Pecola is
a quiet and awkward little girl, obsessed with
Shirley Temple and the belief that whiteness is
beautiful, her own Blackness inherently ugly.
Morrison uses Pecola to show “how something
as grotesque as the demonization of an entire
race could take root inside the most delicate
member of society: a child; the most vulnerable
member: a female.”
Pecola moves back home to live with her
unstable, alcoholic father, Cholly, distant
mother Mrs. Breedlove and a runaway brother,
Sammy. Pecola cannot escape. She begins to
think it is the life she deserves because she is
ugly, a belief reinforced by how she is treated in
her community: She is invisible to the adults in
the community, she is teased by boys at school
and is framed for killing a boy’s cat. Pecola
starts to believe she could transform her life if
only she were prettier. She prays for blue eyes
in an effort to change how the world views her,
and she the world.
One night, when Pecola is 11 years old, Chol-
ly returns home drunk. He sees her washing
dishes and experiences several heavily con-
flicting emotions: tenderness, hatred and lust,
all fueled by guilt. He rapes Pecola and leaves
her unconscious on the floor. Her mother finds
her, disbelieves her story and beats her.
Pecola, now pregnant, visits a self-pro-
claimed psychic with her wish for blue eyes.
He tricks her into killing a dog, and tells her its
sudden death means her wish will be granted.
After this, Claudia tells us how she and her
sister learned through gossip that Pecola was
pregnant. Pecola, who can no longer go to
school, believes everyone’s disregard for her is
rooted in their jealousy of her blue eyes.
“A punch in the gut” is an understatement.
This novel stuns you — not only because it
is blatantly apparent in its exposure of how
the innate discrimination of society destroys
young souls, but also purely by how it is writ-
ten. The form and structure is incredibly lyri-
cal and evocative. Morrison chose to break
the story into distinct parts that, although
divided by each season, are mostly narrated
non-chronologically. It is the objective of the
reader to reassemble the story. This choice was
Morrison’s solution to centering the novel on
Pecola, who is an incredibly delicate and vul-
nerable character. By giving the reader greater
responsibility, Morrison hoped to provoke an
“interrogation of themselves” rather than lead
them into the comfort of pitying Pecola and
ignoring the greater issues at hand.
There are many frequent shifts between
narrators and perspectives that emphasize
Pecola’s shattered world. This ever-changing
structure forbids the dehumanization of the
characters who hurt Pecola, and shifts focus
onto the systemic nature of the issues that
occur. I found the structure to achieve its pur-
pose, and was surprised by Morrison’s claim
in the forward that “it didn’t work: Many
readers remain touched but not moved.” The
quick shifts prevented me from becoming
numb to the discomfort. Each distinct por-
tion of the novel induced a sense of uneasi-
ness, and forced me to acknowledge where
this vexation was sprouting from: In each part,
the same underlying beast was pulsating. I
could trace my discomfort back to the root of
the issue, the discriminatory system, that was
responsible for the characters’ suffering. The
shattered world was explicit. For a reader not
to be moved means the reader was not paying
attention.
LILLY PEARCE
Daily Arts Writer
Sewing and palace
intrigue in ‘Dusk’
Read more at michigandaily.com
LIZZIE YOON
Daily Arts Writer
Read more at michigandaily.com
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW