The book explores vampirism not as a curse but as a powerful force for good. In her introduction to the novel’s 25th anniversary edition, Jewelle Gomez writes that she first invented Gilda after an infuriating experience being sexually harassed on the streets of Manhattan. “In Gilda,” she says, “I created a character who escapes from her deep sense of helplessness as a slave and gains the ultimate power over life and death” (xii). This impetus is what makes The Gilda Stories an example of Afrofuturism, an artistic movement that explores the history and future of the African diaspora using the tools of speculative fiction, imagining utopian possibilities outside the dominant white cultural narrative. Gilda and her compatriots, most but not all of whom have African roots, begin their lives with little power in society due to racial and cultural oppression, and when they become vampires, they can outpace that society and thrive. However, they don’t use their power to replicate those systems of oppression. The word “vampire” only appears a handful of times in the book, a clear indication that it intends to reclaim the concept on its own terms.

One important way this is shown is through the selection and exclusion of certain traditional vampire tropes.