Thought Train to Pusan

The premise of this novel immediately drew me in (a vampire story examining race, sexuality, and female empowerment over time and space: who wouldn’t be interested!), but I soon found myself slogging through it, despite my initial excitement. The Gilda Stories starts with an unnamed girl who is on the run after escaping slavery in 1850s Louisiana. She is taken in and taken care of by a woman named Gilda who runs a brothel, and as time goes on it is alluded that this Gilda is a vampire, who eventually passes on her power and name to the young girl, now known as Gilda for the rest of the novel. From here, we see a series of vignette-type stories following Gilda across 200 year throughout America: moving through California in 1980, Missouri in 1921, Massachusetts in 1955, New York from the 1970s-1980s, New Hampshire in 2020, and finally a place known as “Land of Enchantment” in 2050. Throughout her life, Gilda meets different members of her greater vampire “family”, and forms bonds of he...