Bookworm Review: Joy Goddess: A’Leila Walker and the Harlem Renaissance

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Mama said.

Mama said to be nice to others. Stand up for yourself, she said. You can do whatever you put your mind to. Stay out of trouble. Take care of yourself and those you love. Mama said a lot of things that shaped your life, and in the new book “Joy Goddess” by A’Lelia Bundles, Mama left a huge legacy.

She remembered a time before, and a time after.

In the before, Lelia Walker and her mother had little-to-nothing. Lelia’s father had died when she was very young, and it was up to her mother, Sarah, to put food on the table and a roof over their heads with her hard work. There was simply no room for extras.

In the after – after Sarah had become Madame C.J. Walker, head of a beauty empire that catered to Black women – there was money, mansions, and a certain kind of fame. There was still hard work, too, but Lelia embraced it because she was proud of her mother’s acumen – maybe more so, in fact, after Madame made young Lelia a “full partner” with the responsibility to run some of the farther-flung accounts.

It was true that mother and daughter didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Because she’d worked away from Madame for years, Lelia felt emboldened to speak her mind but Madame often shut her down. Lelia wanted to choose her own husband, but Madame let her feelings about the beau be known. They argued fiercely, then acted like there was never any problem. They loved one another, says Bundles, but they were “fire and ice.”

Lelia, Bundles says, sought her mother’s opinion on all matters, but she didn’t often heed her mother’s words. Madame didn’t like that but as the years passed, she gave more and more of the business up, confident that Lelia (later, A’Lelia) would take care of things – and she was, overseas, as her mother’s health began to fail …

Filled with lush word-painted images of opulence and wealth and a sometimes-reverential tone, “Joy Goddess” is a biography that covers a lot of territory: because author A’Lelia Bundles is A’Lelia Walker’s great-granddaughter, it’s part family history, as well as Black history. It’s a business biography, too, in a large way. And it’s a love story, pure and simple, one that will appeal to any headstrong mother-daughter pair.

It’s that last part that features most strongly and builds to break hearts, even though readers are never unaware of what’s to come. Bundles is honest about how the Walker women changed surrounding lives – Madame had “adopted” a daughter with mixed outcome – and how their beauty empire positively affected Black business and culture for decades but she seems to push racism aside somewhat in the telling here. Instead, Madame and A’Lelia’s accomplishments and the world they lived in take front-and-center, and you’ll appreciate that.

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This is a book for readers who want a wide-reaching biography with hints of inspiration. It’ll make a great book club book or mother-and-daughter tale to share. Read “Joy Goddess.”

Mama would approve.