Week 2 Post

In class, we discussed the stereotypes of vampires throughout media and culture. They are commonly held as creatures that are dark and evil, they prey on humans for blood and generally drain or transform their victims into other vampires. They are weak to the sun, don't have reflections and . Other more modern lores paint vampires as shiny statues of aesthetic perfection that feed off of animals or humans. In Gomez's novel, even early on, we see that the vampires that appear in her book are much different than the vampires that we see in many other books and stories. In the first two chapters, we encounter vampires that are not just blood sucking monsters who live forever, rather we encounter people who have logic like the original Gilda and Bird. The original Gilda is compassionate and kind, as well as thoughtful of those around her. She is also a woman, something that was not very common until modern vampire lore. Bird is a Native American and the new Gilda is an African American. Vampires of different ethnicities was also something that wasn't commonplace until modern society introduced them, and even then they were very few in number and still lost a lot of the characteristics that made them racially human. Becoming a vampire no longer makes one pale and pasty, regardless of their color. Rather, they stay the same, looking as they did in life. Also, there is an introduction of homosexuality in vampire society. Generally vampires are male and heterosexual predators who take pleasure in draining blood from women, especially virgins. In the Gilda stories, not only is Gilda non-selective about whom she drains from, she is also a lesbian vampire who is benevolent in nature. In the first two chapters, we see that there is a significant difference between the vampires in western culture and the vampires in the Gilda Stories

Derrick Alma