The Gilda Stories. A Novel

1991 Gomez, Jewelle (b. 1948). The Gilda Stories. A Novel. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1991. [25^th Anniversary ed.]  San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2016, with a “Foreword” by the author (xi-xii) and an “Afterword. Blood Relations: Gilda and the Stakes of Our Future” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs  (253-59). U. K. ed. London: Sheba Feminist Press, 1992. Parts previously published as “. . . Night.” The American Voice, no. 4 (Fall 1986): 42-46; “No Day Too Long.” Lesbian Fiction: An Anthology. Ed. Elly Bulkin (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1981), 219-24; rpt. in Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Science Fiction and Fantasy. Ed. Camilla DeCarin, Eric Garber, and Lyn Paleo (Boston, MA: Alyson Publications, 1986), 215-23. “Woman Who Loved the Moon.” The Village Voice Literary Supplement. Adapted for the theatre as Bones & Ash and published in The Gilda Stories/Bones & Ash. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 2001 with an “Introduction” by Gomez (ix-xiv), The Gilda Stories (1-252), and “Bones and Ash: A Gilda Story” (253-306). The play was a collaborative work developed between 1993 and 1996 with the Urban Bush Women Company, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Toshi Reagon, Steve Kent, and Doug Smith. It was choreographed and directed by Zollar with Reagon as composer and musical director. It was first performed by the Urban Bush Women Company at Joyce Theatre in New York City November 12, 1996, with other performances in twelve other cities throughout the U.S. PSt

The novel is composed of separate stories set in different time periods beginning in Louisiana in 1850. The protagonist is a slave who becomes a vampire who is a lesbian, and most of the novel is set in places and periods (“Yerba Buena: 1890,” “Rosebud, Missouri: 1921,” “South End: 1955, “Off-Broadway: 1971,” and “Down by the Riverside: 1981”) that allow the author to explore the situation of African Americans, gay people, and other outsiders in that time and place. The last two stories (“Hampton Falls, New Hampshire: 2020” (219-31) and “Land on Enchantment: 2050” (233-52) are set in a future devastated by climate change and in which outsiders remain at risk. Her “Houston.” In her Don’t Explain. Short Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1998), 148-60 is set between these two stories. The title is pronounced like the New York city street, not like the Texas city.  “Caramelle 1864.” Black From the Future: A Collection of Black Speculative Fiction. Ed. Stefanie Andrea Allen and Lauren Cherelle (Clayton, NC: BLF Press, 2019), 9-29 is set near the end of the Civil War. The most recent Gilda story, “Merida, Yucatan: 2060.” Baffling Magazine, no. 1 (October 2020) https://www.bafflingmag.com/issue-one/merida-yucatan-2060 begins at what had been the U.S. Mexico border before Trump’s policies had exacerbated climate change and destroyed and depopulated the area with Gilda moving toward the south where she plans to join others leaving the planet. Often compared to Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979). African American and Native American (Báxoǰe/Ioway) female author.