Reviews tagging 'Suicide attempt'

The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez

10 reviews

hanz's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Slavery, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Sexual harassment

starduststyx's review against another edition

dark hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

ill come back to fill this in soon enough. Fantastic read. There's much I need to speculate on.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Suicide, Violence, Stalking, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Sexual content, Slavery, and Sexual harassment

jessthanthree's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Blood, Suicide attempt, and Murder

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual content, Slavery, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Stalking, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Drug use, Cannibalism, and Colonisation

morimyths's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Rape, Blood, Murder, and Alcohol

Moderate: Alcoholism, Body horror, Cursing, Violence, Suicide attempt, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Drug use, Genocide, Homophobia, Incest, Self harm, Slavery, Suicide, Vomit, Grief, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Abandonment, and War

lynxpardinus's review against another edition

adventurous dark inspiring reflective

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Vomit, Grief, Suicide attempt, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and War

Minor: Incest and Suicidal thoughts

Incest warning is just in case, for the ambiguity of certain relationships.

fareehareads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense fast-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

5.0

This Afro-futurist vampire novel is way more than it appears and is easily my favorite read of 2022. Not only is it the best vampire depiction I have ever read, it also calls for you to look within and ask what does a community look like in the face of human caused devastation? Also, what would you do if given the chance at eternity? The story begins with a girl that grew up on a plantation and runs away, finding herself at a woman-run brothel and in the company of a pair of vampires that become her maternal figures. Each chapter jumps forward in time across the 200 years in her life as we watch Gilda adjust and adapt with each time period. A deep connection to the land is interwoven in the foundation of this story through Gilda's intimate relationship with the character Bird of the Lakota people, and through the physical carrying of soil of her homeland everywhere she goes. She meets various black queer women that shape her life along the way and we get the most tender found family of vampires I've seen in a long time. One of my favorite aspects of the vampire elements in this story is the ingestion of blood. Instead of it being a violent act that leaves the victim drained and lifeless, this story calls the exchange a 'sharing of life' where the vampire takes the human's blood and, in exchange, the human gets to dream out the deepest desires and is left dazed but alive. It's a fantastic book to pick up now and the 2020 predictions from when it was written (1991) are startlingly close to what we've experienced. I wonder how many of the 2050 predictions will come to pass. This story has literally everything you could want and to me, is an instant classic. PLEASE do yourself a favor and read it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Violence, Blood, and Murder

Moderate: Body horror and Abandonment

Minor: Death and Suicide attempt

The 25th anniversary collection contains an updated note about the predictions of The Gilda Stories, and quotes from Audre Lorde texts which were influential in Jewelle's work. I highly recommend looking.

poirot's review against another edition

reflective 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? It's complicated

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Grief, Suicide attempt, Murder, and Alcohol

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, and War

stormywolf's review against another edition

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! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Racial slurs, and Blood

Moderate: Body horror, Drug use, Sexual content, Suicide, Violence, Suicide attempt, and Alcohol

Minor: Biphobia, Drug use, Homophobia, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Slavery, Stalking, Death of parent, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, and Colonisation

liminal's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood

Minor: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Slavery, Suicide attempt, and Murder

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Rape, and Blood

Moderate: Racism, Slavery, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Sexual content

Graphic description of burned flesh; prostitution