Book Cover: Joy Goddess

ABOUT THE BOOK

Dubbed the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s” by poet Langston Hughes, A’Lelia Walker was a dazzling cultural icon whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem cultural scene. After inheriting her mother’s pioneering hair care business, A’Lelia became America’s first high-profile Black heiress and a patron of the arts, hosting luminaries such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, and W.E.B. Du Bois—figures who shaped African American history and culture during the Roaring Twenties.

Author A’Lelia Bundles

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A’Lelia Bundles is the author of Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, a 2026 Anisfield-Wolf Prize finalist, and On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a New York Times Notable Book about her great-great-grandmother. She founded the Madam Walker Family Archives and serves on multiple boards preserving history and women’s stories. She also worked for 30 years at NBC News and ABC News as a producer then as an executive. A recipient of an Emmy for her journalism, she was a MacDowell and Yaddo fellow while writing Joy Goddess.