The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez

The Gilda Stories

Jewelle Gomez

Penguin Publishing Group · Print & ebook · October 14, 2025

A Fantasy pick for readers exploring The Gilda Stories.

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Who it’s for
A vampire classic follows a centuries-long search for home through questions of freedom, family, and ecology.
Themes
Blackness, Radical ecology, Redefinitions of family
Genres
Lesbian Fiction, Monsters & Creatures, Vampire Romance

About this book

Before Buffy, before Twilight, before Octavia Butler’s Fledgling, there was The Gilda Stories, now as a new Penguin Classics hardcover, a Penguin Speculative Fiction Special A Penguin Classic Hardcover 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.

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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, killing as a last resort, Gilda moves through the centuries up to the dystopian future of 2050. Gomez’s classic, with a Black lesbian heroine, has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of Blackness, radical ecology, redefinitions of family, and the erotic potential of the vampire story. Penguin Speculative Fiction Special is a hardcover series of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and more published by Penguin Classics. Featuring custom endpapers, specially commissioned cover art, and introductions by scholars and notable figures, these collectible editions celebrate classics that invite us to ask, “What if?” and that, through bold imagination, alternative visions, and magical realms, transform our perception of our world.

Vampires Across Time

A vampire classic follows a centuries-long search for home through questions of freedom, family, and ecology.

Come here for

  • A Black lesbian heroine in a speculative vampire story
  • A centuries-spanning search for home, from slavery-era Louisiana to 2050

Expect

  • Vampire lore reframed through freedom, family, Blackness, and radical ecology
  • A serious, sustained journey across two centuries

Where it sits

Lesbian Fiction57%
Monsters & Creatures40%
Vampire Romance39%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • The Classics
  • Lesbian Fiction
  • Vampire Romance
Authors
Jewelle Gomez
Publisher
Penguin Publishing Group
Published
October 14, 2025
Format
Print & ebook
Theme
Blackness · Radical ecology · Redefinitions of family
Reading lane
The Classics