Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance
A'Lelia Bundles
Scribner
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.
Joy Goddess takes readers inside her New York homes, where she hosted luminaries including 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.
Drawing on extensive research and personal correspondence, A’Lelia Bundles presents a nuanced biography of a woman navigating life as a wife, mother, businesswoman, and patron outside the shadow of her famous mother’s legacy.