The Gilda Stories

Jewelle Gomez

The Gilda Stories is a senusal feminist adventure following the life of an escaped slave who learns the power of life over death. The novel overturns tradtional notions of what the vampire world might really be. From the fields of Louisiana to the night clubs of New Jersey, Gilda escapes more than enslavement to brutal plantation masters. She is ever watchful of the contemporary horrors a Black woman faces as well as the amoral vampires who stalk her; but still she finds her way to new family and new codes which guide her in living her long life.

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From Publishers Weekly

The central character of this multiracial, feminist, lesbian vampire romance fantasy travels through time and leads multiple lives. Throughout her lives, Gilda is a woman of African descent with strong feminist traits and a sense of loyalty to her friends and family, both mortal and immortal. In her first life, she is a runaway slave in Louisiana in 1850, not yet a vampire, not yet named, who stabs a rapist/bounty hunter in self-defense. Rescued and adopted by Gilda, a vampire who runs a brothel, she soon becomes a vampire herself and adopts Gilda’s name. Subsequent lives take Gilda to California in 1890, Missouri in 1921, Massachusetts in 1955, New York in 1981 where she does a stint as a cabaret singer, and into the future in New Hampshire in 2020 and up to the year 2050. Gomez provides an unusual twist to the erotic vampire novel, introducing issues of race and sexual preference, but there is no attempt to address these issues except as fodder for an ultimately uninteresting romance novel. This is Gomez’s first novel; she is a poet and the author of Flamingoes and Bears.

Midwest Book Review

The Gilda Stories is an elegant, sensual, and natural vampire fantasy. Time-traveling from Southern slavery in 1850 to environmental devastation 200 years later, Gilda is the quintessential outsider seeking community. Jewelle Gomez combines a natural flair for storyteller with an ability to weave tapestries of personality that grab the mind’s imagination and won’t let go. A memorable story, deftly told.

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Details

ISBN	093237994X
Genre	Speculative Fiction; Vampire; Black Interest
Copyright Date	1991
Publication Date	Jun-91
Publisher	Lpc-Firebrand Books
Format	Trade Paperback
No. of Pages	256
Language	English
Rating	Good
BookID	4723

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The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez