A review by pageglue
The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

4.0

My reading experience of this book went like this: This is so cool and good! - It's getting kinda boring. - Where are the lesbians? Where are the vampires? - Hmmm okaaayyy. - Hmm, wait. - Ohhhh, I get what this book is. - This book is very good. - Oh woooowwwww. - Huh. Ok, cool.

I went into this with three words in mind: Black lesbian vampires. It is that, but not what you'd expect. This isn't a typical horror / vampire novel. The way that I would pitch this book is Virginia Woolf's Orlando meets Octavia Butler, by which I mean, it's Black speculative fiction with beautiful writing, and it's about a person who transitions from one thing to another, it takes places over centuries, and there isn't really much of an overarching plot. The book follows Gilda, a Black woman who has self-emancipated after killing her enslaver. She is found and taken in by a lesbian couple who run a brothel, and they educate her and, when they deem her ready, offer to turn her into a vampire.

This story is really about the experiences of Black women in America over the centuries, touching on themes like gender, sexuality, family, history, and race, and the different ways that people find belonging (or estrangement) within them. There are certainly bloody, vampiric action scenes, but they are few and far between the long stretches of dialogue. I found the culture of the vampires in this world really fascinating. At the beginning of this book, Gilda is the only Black vampire we are introduced to, and that's because becoming a vampire is invite only; there's a familial sense of obligation towards those they turn, so they carefully consider who is kin to them. 

I think if I had gone into it with the right expectations I would have enjoyed it more, so I'm definitely keen on rereading it one day. It totally merits it and I'm sure I missed some stuff on the first read. Ultimately, the book's weakest point is the characters, partly because we don't get to know them that well since a lot of them are mortal and don't see it through to the end or they are introduced late in the book, and partly because I feel like not many of them were that impactful to the plot.