Gilda is a dark-skinned black woman born into slavery on a Mississippi plantation. Her mother was born in West Africa of the Fulani people and made the Middle Passage on a slave ship to the United States. Back on the plantation, she had sisters named Minerva, Florine, and Martha, and her father’s name was Tuck. Her name, which she takes from the vampire who transforms her, means “gold,” pointing to her worth and rarity.

Gilda favors men’s or gender-neutral clothing throughout her life, starting with the moment we first meet her and continuing even when such a choice is considered quite eccentric, like when she requires a late 19th-century dressmaker to create “a design that from a distance looked like a skirt but was, in fact, split like pants and afforded Gilda the freedom of movement she would not forgo” (72). These garments show her literally clothed in freedom at every opportunity and suggest her comfort with her lesbian sexuality.

Gilda’s professions showcase a variety of ways black women have historically been able to achieve financial independence. Though she never works as a prostitute herself, she serves their communities on more than one occasion, and there is never any shame associated with this, only a sense of empowerment.