Description

‘A groundbreaking work of Afrofuturism before the term was even coined’ Guardian

‘A lush, exciting, inspiring read’ Sarah Waters

In this radically reimagined vampire myth, the night hides many things…

Louisiana, 1850. A young girl escapes slavery and is taken in by two mysterious women. Rumoured to be witches, the pair travel only at night, dress in men’s clothing and seem to know others’ innermost thoughts. But the girl sees the promise of true freedom in their dark glittering eyes: the promise to ‘share the blood’ and live forever. They name her Gilda.

Over the next two hundred years, Gilda moves through unseen spaces: through antebellum brothels, gold-rush bars, Black women’s suffrage groups, hair salons and jazz clubs, searching for a way to exist in the world. Her body, powerful against the passage of time, will know both beauty and horror through the women she desires and the blood she craves. But can Gilda truly outrun the darkness of history and face a future where the lives of everyone she loves are at stake?

Publisher Review

The Gilda Stories was ahead of its time when it was first published in 1991… Gomez’s characters are rooted in historical reality yet lift seductively out of it, to trouble traditional models of family, identity, and literary genre and imagine for us bold new patterns. A lush, exciting, inspiring read — Sarah Waters Fire for the conscience and food for the soul… Jewelle Gomez’s 1991 novel, The Gilda Stories, helped shape the emergence of Afro- and Indigenous futurisms — Jay Bernard, author of Surge The Gilda Stories is groundbreaking not just for the wild lives it portrays, but for how it portrays them – communally, unapologetically, roaming fiercely over space and time — Emma Donoghue, author of Room ‘How Long ‘Til Black Future Month’, asks NK Jemisin in the title of her recent short story collection. The brilliant Octavia Butler provided many profound answers, and keeping her company was Jewelle Gomez. Her diamantine novel The Gilda Stories traces Black lesbian community from the antebellum South to technodystopian 2050, via Gilda, who escapes slavery and becomes a vampire. Meeting other queer Black, Indigenous and Latinx ‘sisters in the life’, Gilda develops both her compelling ethics and her swoonsome butch style, determined to survive racism, sexism, homophobia and climate crisis by loving others * Dazed & Confused * This revolutionary classic by a pioneer in black speculative fiction will delight and inspire generations to come — Tananarive Due