Reviews with content warning for Rape - The Gilda Stories

This was a lot slower than I thought it would be with not much of a plot. It’s more a collection of vignettes following Gilda, who happens to be a vampire. The best thing is seeing a black woman move through time and maintaining power in her life. I didn’t really connect with the characters, though, who were often only in one vignette.

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liminal's review against another edition

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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

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sraymartin's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

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

2.75

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ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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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

nicolewhopickedthisbook's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

3.0

TW: Slavery, Racism, use of the N-Word and the F-Word, sexual assault, blood

I did really enjoy this book and was intrigued about where it was going. The interesting aspects of this book was Gilda in her vampire life and we even get into an apocalyptic 2050 when people find out about vampires and hunters emerge.

I did feel at times this book did drag on a bit and even certain passages repeat themselves. Either the wording was too similar or Gilda was just thinking things in a loop. There were a couple of times when Gilda was thinking of something while in the middle of a gathering or party and the passage would just jump back and forth between her thoughts and the goings on around her making the writing seem very choppy and it would definitely pull me out of the story.

Pop Culture Readathon 80’s Round Bonus Prompt: LGBTQ+ Rep

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toopunkrockforshul's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was a very interesting take on the vampire genre, and had some very interesting commentary and implications. I loved the structure of Gilda's life throughout the decades and was suprised that it ended up being quite speculative in the end. The writing style didn't grab me as much as other books have but the story was very engaging the focus on humanity and sharing life with others was very poignant.

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