Race, Freedom, and the Black Vampire in Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories

This essay argues that Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories, through its portrayal of the lessons that Gilda learns on her journey to freedom, can be read as a queer (antinormative) critique of Afrocentrism and multicultural conservatism. Although Afrocentrism and multicultural conservatism are ideological adversaries, Gomez suggests in The Gilda Stories that these movements share one thing in common: both are based on the “single-issue” view of black freedom in which the black lesbian functions as the Other of the Other, one who can never be the subject of black freedom.