A’Lelia Bundles is the great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, the country’s first Black woman millionaire. Ms. Bundles authored the bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a work in which she carefully researched to craft an accurate biography. It led to the four-part Netflix hit series, Self Made, starring Octavia Spencer.

Ms. Bundle’s fifth book, Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, is the biography of her great-grandmother, whose parties and arts patronage helped define that.

Synopsis: Dubbed the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s” by poet Langston Hughes, A’Lelia Walker, daughter of millionaire entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and the author’s great-grandmother and namesake, is a fascinating figure whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem Renaissance.

After inheriting her mother’s hair care enterprise, A’Lelia would become America’s first high profile Black heiress and a prominent patron of the arts. Joy Goddess takes readers inside her three New York homes—a mansion, a townhouse, and a pied-a-terre—where she entertained Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, W.E.B. DuBois, and other cultural, social and intellectual luminaries of the Roaring Twenties.

In Joy Goddess, A’Lelia’s radiant personality and impresario instincts—at the center of a vast, artistic social world where she flourished as a fashion trendsetter and international traveler—are brought to vivid and unforgettable life. This insightful work releases June 10, 2025.

Bundles is a member of several boards and advisory councils including the March On Film Festival, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Archives Foundation, BIO (Biographers International), Columbia Global Reports, Indiana Landmarks and George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. She founded the Madam Walker Family Archives, the largest private collection of Walker ephemera, photographs and memorabilia.

is the great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, the country’s first Black woman millionaire. Ms. Bundles authored the bestseller and New York Times Notable Book, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a work in which she carefully researched to craft an accurate biography. It led to the four-part Netflix hit series, Self Made, starring Octavia Spencer.

Ms. Bundle’s fifth book, Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, is the biography of her great-grandmother, whose parties and arts patronage helped define that.

Synopsis: Dubbed the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s” by poet Langston Hughes, A’Lelia Walker, daughter of millionaire entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and the author’s great-grandmother and namesake, is a fascinating figure whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem Renaissance.

After inheriting her mother’s hair care enterprise, A’Lelia would become America’s first high profile Black heiress and a prominent patron of the arts. Joy Goddess takes readers inside her three New York homes—a mansion, a townhouse, and a pied-a-terre—where she entertained Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, W.E.B. DuBois, and other cultural, social and intellectual luminaries of the Roaring Twenties.

In Joy Goddess, A’Lelia’s radiant personality and impresario instincts—at the center of a vast, artistic social world where she flourished as a fashion trendsetter and international traveler—are brought to vivid and unforgettable life. This insightful work releases June 10, 2025.

Bundles is a member of several boards and advisory councils including the March On Film Festival, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the National Archives Foundation, BIO (Biographers International), Columbia Global Reports, Indiana Landmarks and George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs. She founded the Madam Walker Family Archives, the largest private collection of Walker ephemera, photographs and memorabilia.