For them, becoming a vampire represents the transformation from a victim of oppression to a woman with power. In fact, the vampire mythology is especially relatable to the escaped slave, Gilda, and the Lakota woman, Bird. This idea is particularly reinforced in the way that the vampires must carry the soil of their birthplace with them in order to move in the sunlight. They were once human and can move among humans, but can never truly be part of them. This draws on their previous lives as humans to remind them of their obligation to humanity while nourishing their immortality. In this book, most of the vampires just take the blood they need from humans and leave a good idea or thought in its place.

One of the most incredible aspects of the book is the use of the vampire mythology. From there, the new Gilda spends the next 200 years learning to live, love, and protect her freedom. Eventually, The Girl is initiated as a vampire by Gilda and Bird and christened Gilda after the original Gilda dies. After being taken in by a white lesbian vampire brothel owner named Gilda, The Girl learns about freedom from the other women at the brothel and Bird, a vampire woman from the Lakota tribe and Gilda’s lover. The Gilda Stories tells the story of an escaped slave originally known as The Girl. At its 25 th anniversary, The Gilda Stories is an amazing introduction to the power of black female queer vampires. While the story featured the same protagonist in The Gilda Stories and reads like a chapter from the book, the story wasn’t published until nine years after the book was. This is Gomez's first novel she is a poet and the author of Flamingoes and Bears.I first learned about Jewelle Gomez and her book The Gilda Stories through the short story Chicago 1927. Gomez provides an unusual twist to the erotic vampire novel, introducing issues of race and sexual preference, but there is no attempt to address these issues except as fodder for an ultimately uninteresting romance novel. Subsequent lives take Gilda to California in 1890, Missouri in 1921, Massachusetts in 1955, New York in 1981 where she does a stint as a cabaret singer, and into the future in New Hampshire in 2020 and up to the year 2050. Rescued and adopted by Gilda, a vampire who runs a brothel, she soon becomes a vampire herself and adopts Gilda's name. In her first life, she is a runaway slave in Louisiana in 1850, not yet a vampire, not yet named, who stabs a rapist/bounty hunter in self-defense. Throughout her lives, Gilda is a woman of African descent with strong feminist traits and a sense of loyalty to her friends and family, both mortal and immortal. The central character of this multiracial, feminist, lesbian vampire romance fantasy travels through time and leads multiple lives.

The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez