The Gilda Stories: Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition

*Recommended by Reese Witherspoon's Book Club!

*Voted One of Book Riot's Most Influential Queer Books & Horror Novels of All Time!

Before Buffy, before Twilight, before Octavia Butler's Fledgling, there was The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez's sexy vampire novel.

This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.

"The Gilda Stories is groundbreaking not just for the wild lives it portrays, but for how it portrays them--communally, unapologetically, roaming fiercely over space and time."--Emma Donoghue, author of Room

"Jewelle Gomez sees right into the heart. This is a book to give to those you want most to find their own strength."--Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out Of Carolina

Jewelle Gomez is a writer, activist, and the author of many books including Forty-Three Septembers, Don't Explain, The Lipstick Papers, Flamingoes and Bears, and Oral Tradition. The Gilda Stories was the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards, and was adapted for the stage by the Urban Bush Women theater company in thirteen United States cities.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs was named one of UTNE Reader's 50 Visionaries Transforming the World, a Reproductive Reality Check Shero, a Black Woman Rising nominee, and was awarded one of the first-ever "Too Sexy for 501c3" trophies. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

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288 pages

Average rating: 8

9 RATINGS

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Poe Bluez

Apr 29, 2024

7/10 stars

7/10 -- Begins with a white savior trope. The main character doesn't even receive her own name; she's addressed as the white savior (Gilda) throughout the book with the exception of Chapters 1-2 where she is referred to as "The Girl." The story is somewhat immersive, however, as we see the evolution of "Gilda" through the many decades she traverses (& jobs she obtains).

Game of Tomes

Jan 03, 2023

10/10 stars

One of the standards of vampire fiction. It’s a crime it hasn’t already been adapted into a pop culture tv sensation. The Gilda Stories span across three different centuries, showcasing little moments of the stories and safe spaces of its cast of black and queer characters. It is disheartening that a book so cherished as a black lesbian classic from the 1990s was not on my radar at all. I only learned about it from looking at the book selections from black-owned bookstores, when it really should also be brought up in literary circles and supernatural fiction enclaves. 10/10 recommend, especially in conjunction with reading The Vampyre, Dracula, Carmilla, and other classic vampire works.

Jordynnnn

Nov 12, 2022

7/10 stars

Black woman VAMPIRE she is a lesbian vampire. The book takes you throughout the years 1830-2050. She was a runaway slave, simply referred to as The Girl and was picked up by a vampire named Gilda who took her in and raised her along with Bird, then as a young woman, she was turned into a vampire by Gilda when Gilda saw that she was ready for it and had much to live for, and also when she decided to end her own afterlife and didn’t want to leave Bird alone, then The Girl took on the name Gilda from her predecessor. Each chapter is a different time period and a different story and it takes you into her journey of being comfortable with herself and comfortable with her place in black American society as an immortal interacting and making relationships with mortals. It is however an awfully short book, I wish the stories were longer

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