Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress

by Thylias Moss

Within my life's present unified theory of being, splendor divests itself of its own integrity, splitting to belong to everything that notices it, each part as effective as the whole splendid thing. It belongs to whatever wants it and is inexhaustible even as someone lays dying, even as someone else cries thinking there is none, their tears becoming prisms. . . With these words, the acclaimed poet Thylias Moss proclaims a hymn to the power of light over darkness, both in her own life, and in the wider world. In this, her first prose work, the author of six books of poetry and winner of the most distinguished honors--including a MacArthur Fellowship Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship and a Writing Award--delivers a brilliant, passionate, and utterly moving memoir. It is the story of the only child of a maid and factory worker who moved to Ohio from the segregated South of the fifties. Raised with much love, she flourished until the age of five, when disaster struck, in the form of a girl in sky-blue dress. Her childhood was shattered by this girl, her babysitter, who took pleasure from infliction pain, and whose reign of terror, even after its abrupt end, would send poisonous tendril further into her life. Yet ultimately, Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress is about how a young woman retrieved her life from the grasp of darkness. It is about refusing to accept tyranny. It is about feasting on splendor. How can there not be pain in a world spinning madly, in the lovely calculable chaos. . .? asks Thylias. But, she says, I am saying that joy is too necessary to abandon.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Thylias Moss is a multiracial maker, an award-winning poet, recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" grant, and twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry.

Reviews

[Jules]

trigger warning: extremely detailed instances of rape and sexual assault (especially those of statutory rape and involving children), as well as detailed descriptions of (the pain of) healing from said experiences

(I wanted to put this here due to the fact that it is not here already and from a quick google, I couldn't find the warnings there either)

I feel I cannot give this book a rating. it was so extremely painful for me to read those scenes and it caused a deep reaction in me so that I did not want to, and even felt at times that I could not, finish the book. However, I did. and though I did not find the ending "satisfying" in response to these depictions of violence, it felt like it was attempting to be, and I appreciate that.

with that said, I feel complicated about this book and it is not that it is "bad", just painful. and sometimes painful can be "good"

[Kinsey Eccles · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this whole book and all I got out of it was that humans are not cuttlefish.

[Bella Harwood]

Tale of a Sky-Blue Dress is an autobiography based on the life of the author, Thylias Moss. She tells the story of her abusive and evil babysitter who was known for dressing in a sky-blue dress to let her know who was inflicting pain upon her. She grew up in a household with two loving, working class parents and when they went to work, they needed someone to watch their daughter after school. Lytta Dorsey was evil and she would slap her, hit her, and sexually abuse her everyday after school for four straight years because Thylias was too traumatized to tell her parents. She publishes this story to tell how she is doing now after such a horrendous childhood.
Thylias Moss wrote this novel to tell the truths of what it’s like to be in a situation like this and how it feels being stuck in a nightmare everyday. She says that it was tough to get out of a slump having to live with a constant fear of something, but eventually, she stood up for who she was and how someone could move on from such a horrible past. She explains in the end that she was definitely more than what someone cut her out to be. She said that being called a “nigger” when she was being raped was the most degrading act that anyone could go through. It lowered her self-esteem so much that she was trained to believe that she couldn’t do anything to change and show people who she was. Thylias sets an example for anyone who has to go through the same thing that she did and tells them that everything only goes uphill from there.
Due to startling and incredibly descriptive sense of imagery, the book is cut out for older people who can handle the book maturely and seriously. Other than that, I do suggest that you read this book to further educate yourself in something that is unfortunately still a reality.