Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - The Gilda Stories

- THE GILDA STORIES is an expansive, meditative exploration of found family, womanhood, and Blackness told through the story of Gilda, a young Black lesbian vampire, as she lives through the centuries.
- It took me a bit to get into this story, as I often find older novels keep the characters at a bit of a remove for my tastes. But once I got a handle on it, I was invested in Gilda and her search for a place and people to belong with.
- It reminded me quite a bit of Octavia E. Butler's work, not just for the vampire parallels to FLEDGLING, but also for the considerations of complex relationships and families as characters navigate new situations and realities.

Content Warnings

stormywolf's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Breaking out of my reading slump to read last month's pick in Maven of the Eventide's (aka Elisa Hansen's) Vampire Book Club proved to be no easy feat. Unfortunately, my library did not carry the audiobook, and it turned out I had other obligations the night of the meeting. Luckily I found a copy of the audio online, and, as always, the book club meetings are saved for posterity, so while I wasn't there for the live discussion, I was able to participate in some ways (unlike the previous month's when my library didn't even carry a text copy for The Silver Kiss). And though I'd never heard of this book before the club picked it out, the premise seemed especially intriguing and I was eager to experience it. Let me just say, wow.

Read my full review at The Wolf's Den

Overall, this book will undoubtedly sit with me for quite sometime. From the characters, to the settings, to the long and tumultuous journey of self-discovery, I was wholly invested. The exploration of life, and what it means to live and love from the perspective of an outsider, along with powerful depictions of struggling to choose what's best for yourself and for those around you, even if that means starting over, were what impacted me the most. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in historical fiction, books featuring BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+ main characters, empowering women, Afrofuturism, or just a fresh, new take on vampires—even hailing from 30 years ago!

Content Warnings

liminal's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“My dream was to see the world, over time. The real dream is to make a world—to see the people and still want to make a world.”

TITLE—The Gilda Stories

AUTHOR—Jewelle Gomez

PUBLISHED—1995

GENRE—queer vampire story; literary fiction; historical fiction

SETTING—various places across the US including Mississippi, Louisiana, San Francisco, Missouri, Boston, NYC, New Hampshire, the SW (from 1850 - 2050)

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—vampires, queerness, Blackness, found family

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️—the writing style just felt a bit slow and bumpy; it was beautiful just not as fluid as I like it to be...

CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️—this book is not about plot but I felt there was just the slightest of disconnects between chapters that felt a little distracting and also repetitive at times...

BONUS ELEMENT/S—[spoiler, lol] Bird went to New Zealand to participate in the Maori landrights movement!; also the found family trope was really well-developed in this story—one of my favorite things about vampire lit <3

PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book was like “vampire story but make it a literary memoir” and yeah—I am here for it. <3 It has a lot of the tropes surrounding vampire stories such as sex and body horror, found family, discussion of the ethics of immortality etc. I think it is inarguably the best demonstration of the importance of both queerness and Blackness in the vampire mythology as well. It was a *very* slow read for me for some reason though, although I kept on with it because I was interested in the story (and it was a bookclub pick 😂) but at times I was feeling a *little* bit like I was slogging through it.

“…as neoliberalism encourages privileged families to shape their lesbian and gay households in the image of hetero-patriarchy, Gilda’s example of chosen family and queer reproduction is instructive.”

I also particularly love the above quote from Alexis Gumbs’s afterword to the 25th Anniversary edition. It demonstrates why this book is *such* an important part of the queer literary tradition and what Gomez was really trying to accomplish thematically with Gilda and her story.

“My life is wherever I am.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Further Reading—

the Tao Te Ching
Fledgling, by Octavia Butler
maybe one of the Interview with a Vampire series, by Anne Rice?

Content Warnings

lleullawgyffes's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Content Warnings

More...