The Gilda Stories

First published in 1991, The Gilda Stories is a groundbreaking speculative fiction vampire novel that begins in 1850s Louisiana, where a young Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who “shares the blood” by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. Taking only blood as sustenance and killing only as a last resort, Gilda moves through the centuries up to the dystopian future of 2050. Gomez’s classic, featuring a Black lesbian heroine, has endured as a prescient exploration of Blackness, radical ecology, redefinitions of family, and the erotic potential of the vampire story.