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

