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The Gilda Stories

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The Gilda Stories

By: Jewelle Gomez
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
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About this listen

"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)

"Jewelle Gomez sees right into the heart. This is a book to give to those you want most to find their own strength." (Dorothy Allison)

This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where 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 200 years searching for a place to call home.

An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.

©1991, 2016 Jewelle Gomez (P)2019 Audible, Inc.
African American Classics Fantasy Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Heartfelt Vampire

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Life sucking!

I actually ended up listening to the first 7 hrs on day one and the remaining 4 on the day after. The book drew me in and took me just like a vampire.

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Not your typical vampire book

^^ I mean it. I came into this book hearing that it was about Black lesbian vampires and was pretty annoyed during the first third-half of the book that that wasn’t really what it was about, at least, it wasn’t full of queer love / vampire action. This book is a more delicately told story of what it’s like being a Black woman in the US over the centuries. It’s very thematically driven, exploring gender, queerness, family, history, race, and how people feel a sense of belonging in relation to all of that. There is blood and violence and action, but don’t go into it got that. I’d pitch this as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando but with vampires meets Octavia Butler’s Black speculative fiction and beautiful writing. Not giving it 5 stars because I felt most of the characters weren’t very impactful to me as the reader and also to the plot.

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