#The Gilda Stories

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[knifeeater]

from Jewelle Gomez The Gilda Stories

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[whilereadingandwalking]

In absolute queer classic The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, a young girl flees slavery after her mother's death and finds herself adopted by the proprietor of a prosperous, well-run brothel in Louisiana. Before choosing to end her very long life, the proprietor gives the girl two gifts: eternal life, and her name, Gilda. From there, we follow Gilda through her life as a cautious, independent, queer Black vampire, from Yerba Buena in 1890 to 1950s Boston to the disturbing unknowns of 2050.

This was the perfect book to read to kick off Pride Month. Yes it's deliciously queer and sapphic. But more important for me was the queering of what constitutes family, home, and intimacy. Family is a very conscious choice in this world of vampires. They live by a code of exchange—to honor life, and to only take blood if you leave a dream, token, boost of some kind behind. Not all vampires are like them, but they try to change only those who are ready for the life, who are open to learn their way. And so there's a real study of chosen family, and of a group of people who are incredibly intimate even when thousands of miles apart. Gilda must learn how to be both open and independent, both cautious and intimate, and discover all the different ways there are to love.

Gomez's vampires are old in body and soul, and earthy—they carry their home soil in the hems of their clothes and stuffed into their pallets. They learn how to be both human and apart, to blend while changing lives, or causes, for the better. The characters are vivid, rich, and compelling, and each chunk of story has its own arc and change of scene. There are little craft things here and there. The 3rd person point-of-view can skip around, a loose end or two go untied. And when you read the 2020 section, remember that the book was written in 1991.

Overall, I really enjoyed this fantasy read that felt like a classic, with its careful language and with a big scope filtered through one woman's eyes.

Content warnings for sexual assault, racism/racist language, homophobia/homophobic language, violence, ableism, suicidal ideation.

[thestormthatrises]

FUCK

THIS

SHOW!!

Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!!Fuck this show!! Fuck, fuck FUCK this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!!

Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!! Fuck this show!!Fuck this show!! Fuck this stupid ass, dumbass fuck, badly written 2014 Wattpad fanfiction of a show!!

If you want to enjoy good poc vampire fiction, I implore you to read Fledgeling, by Octavia Butler

Which is actually good and written by an amazing, passionate author (who deserves more than fucking Anne Rice and her bad last fanfiction) and is woman of color. A true icon!!

OR FUCKING CERTAIN DARK THINGS BY SILVIA MORENO-GARCIA!

OR THE GILDA STORIES BY JEWELLE GOMEZ

OR THE SEVEN AND SÉTIMO (SEVENTH) BY ANDRÉ VIANCO!!

ANYTHING!!

ANYTHING!!

ANYTHING!!

But this bullshit crap that doesn't understand the story it's trying to rip off, has no source of internal consistency, destroyed the characters ethos and pathos, and is a fucking W A S T E of the talented actors that got roped into into this fucking WASTE OF MONEY and TIME.

FUCK

THIS

SHOW!!!

Everyone deserved better than this stupid shit, from the actors, the fans of the books and the people watching (especially if you're the type of person that took genuine criticism of this dumbass show and started shouting that everyone who didn't like it was racist). These fucking writers and producers were using your rage to excuse their LAZINESS and APATHY for the source material AND for telling a cohesive story! Fuck this show!

Fuck this show right in the eye with it's terrible Lestat and his what in the flying fuck Armand and the psycho rapist Killer and it's stupid cliffhanger of an ending.

FUCK

THIS

SHOW!

[skydalorian]

Between reading "The Gilda Stories" and re-reading "I Vampire" in the last three years, I've grown irascible and joyfully picky about my vampires.

Interview who??? Surely y'all aren't satisfied with live-action Lestat. The man should be more wild and deep and philosophically tortured. Do yourself a favour and pick up some novellas including or focused on lesbian vampires. Thank you.

[robotbodies]

reading the gilda stories and absolutely shocked at how i’ve never seen anyone discuss this novel outside of the recommendation thread i found it in?? this is one of the best pieces of vampire fiction i’ve read??

[jumping-jackalope]

watching interview with the vampire shortly after finishing the gilda stories is a special type of insanity inducing. btw

[the-final-sentence]

Gilda was no longer fleeing for her life.

Jewelle Gomez, from The Gilda Stories

[bobbyinthegarden]

Bobby’s 2033 Reading Challenge - First Three Months Update

Here is my original post outlining this challenge

I thought it would be fun to give a little update now that the first three months of 2023 have come to an end.

So far, I have read 7 out of 25 books (and am in the process of reading the 8th), so I’m making pretty good progress, that being said, I am a little behind of doing full write-ups for each book, I have two full reviews to write, and I am planning on doing so in the near future.

The books I have read so far are as follows (in no particular order):

Poetry: Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (Full Review Here)

Essays: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (Full Review Here)

Non-Fiction: First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung (Review Incoming)

Fantasy: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin (Full Review Here)

Vampires: The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez (Full Review Here)

Re-imagined Classic: Alec by William di Canzio (Full Review Here)

Mystery: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (Review Incoming)    

I’ve mostly decided on all of the books that I’m going to read for each category, however, I still haven’t decided on a book for the humour/satire, standalone novel and graphic novel categories, so if anybody has any particular recommendations for any of those categories, please let me know.

Outside of this reading challenge, I have a general goal to read at least 50 books this year. So far I’ve read 15, so that’s pretty good. I’m also planning on reading and reviewing a lot of the re-tellings / sequels of The Secret Garden, so be prepared for some of those reviews coming soon as well. 

[randomthigs]

It’s been a while and I’m still waiting on the Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson.

While I wait I’ve been reading The Diabolic series and The Gilda Stories.

These books have been holding me over but I’ve got something’s to say about them. However I’ll leave that long post for another day (or year knowing myself).

I’m still mad that Kelsier’s dead though😡.

[queerlit]

Six Spooky Queer Novels

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

Photo Source Alex is a bruja and the most powerful witch in her family. But she's hated magic ever since it made her father disappear into thin air. So while most girls celebrate their Quinceañera, Alex prepares for her Deathday―the most important day in a bruja's life and her only opportunity to rid herself of magic. But the curse she performs during the ceremony backfires, and her family vanishes, forcing Alex to absorb all of the magic from her family line. Left alone, Alex seeks help from Nova, a brujo with ambitions of his own. -- Amazon

The Gilda Stories by Jewelle L. Gómez

Photo Source The winner of two Lambda Literary Awards (fiction and science fiction) The Gilda Stories is a very lesbian American odyssey. Escaping from slavery in the 1850s Gilda's longing for kinship and community grows over two hundred years. Her induction into a family of benevolent vampyres takes her on an adventurous and dangerous journey full of loud laughter and subtle terror. -- Goodreads

The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Photo Source Caitlín R. Kiernan is a master of her craft of dark fantasy-sci-fi horror and The Drowning Girl is an excellent place to start with her books. India Morgan Phelps — aka Imp — begins her first person story by telling the reader that she is schizophrenic and that she’s aware of her own unreliability. This, of course, calls into question the entirety of the book that follows. But this is not a story that asks you to guess whether the supernatural elements are real or whether they are just a product of Imp’s mental health status. Instead, it’s an investigation of how the paranormal — Imp’s encounter with a mysterious figure — interacts with mental illness. This post-modern creepy, if not outright scary story, also features a lesbian relationship between a cis and a trans woman! -- Autostraddle

Ghost Wood Song by Erica Waters

Photo Source Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to call ghosts from the grave with his fiddle, but she also knows the fiddle’s tunes bring nothing but trouble and darkness. But when her brother is accused of murder, she can’t let the dead keep their secrets. In order to clear his name, she’s going to have to make those ghosts sing. -- Goodreads

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Photo Source Marion: the new girl. Awkward and plain, steady and dependable. Weighed down by tragedy and hungry for love she’s sure she’ll never find. Zoey: the pariah. Luckless and lonely, hurting but hiding it. Aching with grief and dreaming of vanished girls. Maybe she’s broken—or maybe everyone else is. Val: the queen bee. Gorgeous and privileged, ruthless and regal. Words like silk and eyes like knives, a heart made of secrets, and a mouth full of lies. Their stories come together on the island of Sawkill Rock, where gleaming horses graze in rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. Where kids whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. Where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen away by a ravenous evil no one has dared to fight… until now. -- Goodreads

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Photo Source Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work. The tale of Dorian Gray’s moral disintegration caused a scandal when it first appeared in 1890, but though Wilde was attacked for the novel’s corrupting influence, he responded that there is, in fact, “a terrible moral in Dorian Gray.” Just a few years later, the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde’s homosexual liaisons, which resulted in his imprisonment. Of Dorian Gray’s relationship to autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be—in other ages, perhaps. -- Goodreads

[angelsstranger]

Finished The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez this morning and then started and finished The Seep by Chana Porter in 4 hours. Posting about them together because they make a great pairing.

The Gilda Stories reimagines narratives of the undead and vampirism through the black lesbian perspective, positing that black women and indigenous women given the power for eternal life, could still find the humanity within themselves to invest in found family structures and find kinship through the ages in their global diasporas and through the witnessing and love of their own culture. Though it was published in 1991, I have yet to find a historical horror novel besides this one which imagines a world in which black culture and art is not only highlighted, but comprises the center of the narrarive at all times. And reading a book that visualizes the queer experience as something larger than the partners we chose or our sex lives feels so desperately needed to this day. I feel like I lived through the ages with Gilda and hopefully became a better writer from studying the work of Jewelle Gomez. I know I will reread it again and again. (I’ll add below some excerpts from the afterword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs as it would make a great pitch for anyone interested)

The Seep is a story that questions Utopia itself, the aftermath of humanities contact with a supposedly benevelent alien race called The Seep, and what the world looks like without money or the need for jobs or purportedly even feeling sadness or discomfort. The book follows a fifty-year-old butch trans woman named Trina FastHorse Goldberg-Oneka as she mourns the loss of her wife Deeba, who decides to use alien technology to revert back to being a baby and start life anew again with a family who will raise her without the traumas of the past. Trina who is caught in a depressed stupor binge drinking and ignoring her few remaining friends, finds herself on an inevitable journey to search for her future as she realizes she wants to help a young boy who seems as lost and alone as she is.

Those who enjoyed Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, but felt it a tad grimdark and not lesbian or transgender enough for their liking would really enjoy this book. It also reminds me of A Psalm For the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers because both stories seem to posit that in a world beyond capitalism, our main conflicts as humans may be between the self and the collective, finding the line between selfishness and honoring your need to grow independently sometimes making mistakes and choosing yourself over others.

I would also like to add that The Seep is one of the only books I have read that focuses thematically on substance abuse in queer spaces which really touched me deeply. And yet, Chana Porter managed to get a laugh out loud out of me on at least four occasions.

since im back on tumblr I will be posting more regular book reviews of the books I read that I feel deserve a spotlight somewhere :) in the hopes that whoever needs these books finds them. Posts will be tagged #foxreads

[whilereadingandwalking]

Hi hi! I hope you're well. Was it you that read a book about a Black vampire from the antebellum period?

Yes! The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez begins in the antebellum period.

[rbtbc]

Homecoming Chaos and A Heavy Middle Grade Read - October 15, 2023 Week in Reading https://youtu.be/R90i98CIVeM?si=EQsqEdJG-8DmaVV-

[whipbogard]

The way he’s such a Hot Mess™️ in here because he lost his coin