JOY GODDESS

The eventful life of a celebrity heiress.

Bundles, a former network television executive and producer, draws on family archives to create a lively portrait of her great-grandmother, A’Lelia Walker (1885-1931), a tireless champion of Black artists, writers, and musicians. The only child of millionaire beauty entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker, the subject of Bundles’ earlier biography, Lelia (she added A’ to her name in 1923) became an influential figure of the Harlem Renaissance and a prominent socialite, swathed in furs and dressed in French couture, who hosted glittering parties in her Harlem townhouse and villa on the Hudson. Her life began in hardship: Her mother had been a St. Louis laundress and a widow when she married a man who turned out to be abusive. She escaped, with Lelia, to Denver, married C. J. Walker, and reinvented herself as a savvy, successful businesswoman, selling products particularly suited to Black people’s needs. Lelia’s relationship with her mother was tense and sometimes acrimonious, and Madam could be critical of Lelia’s handling of her business responsibilities, social life, and choice of suitors. In rebellion, Lelia eloped in 1909 with a man who would, as her mother predicted, betray her. Her second marriage, to philandering physician Wiley Wilson, was no better; a third marriage also ended in divorce. Encouraged by her mother, Lelia adopted Mae Bryant, a fatherless girl who served as a hair model and assistant for the company. While Mae at first considered the adoption a great privilege, Lelia proved as domineering as Madam had been, leaving Mae—Bundles’ biological grandmother—feeling “indebted and cornered.” Lelia could be difficult, to be sure, but Bundles captures her energy, her drive, and her commitment to the creative community that she nourished.

An engaging biography of a formidable woman.