The Gilda Stories: Expanded 25th Anniversary Edition [Paperback]

The Gilda Storiesis 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 ofRoom

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 two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991,The Gilda Storieshas 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.

Jewelle Gomezis a writer, activist, and the author of many books includingForty-Three Septembers,Don't Explain,The Lipstick Papers,Flamingoes and Bears, andOral Tradition.The Gilda Storieswas the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards, and was adapted for the stage by the Urban Bush Women theater company in thirteen United States cities.

Alexis Pauline Gumbswas named one ofUTNE Reader's 50 Visionaries Transforming the World, a Reproductive Reality Check Shero, a Black Woman Rising nominee, and was awarded one of the first-ever Too Sexy for 501c3 trophies. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

More praise forThe Gilda Stories:

Jewelle's big-hearted novel pulls old rhythms out of the earth, the beauty shops and living rooms of black lesbian herstory, expressed by the dazzling vampire Gilda. Her resilience is a testament to black queer women’s love, power, and creativity. Brilliant! --Joan Steinau Lester, author ofBlack, White, Other