A’Lelia Bundles Discusses ‘Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance’
Community members, Columbia University students, and local scholars gathered at the Lee C. Bollinger Forum to hear from A’Lelia Bundles and Eric K. Washington.
On Dec. 2, community members, Columbia University students, and local scholars gathered at the Lee C. Bollinger Forum for a conversation between A'Lelia Bundles (JRN'76) and Eric K. Washington.
"Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance" is Bundles' new book about her great-grandmother, A'Lelia Walker, the daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and a Harlem icon whose legendary parties and “Dark Tower” salon helped define the Harlem Renaissance.
After inheriting her mother’s haircare enterprise, A’Lelia Walker 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-à-terre—where she entertained Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, W.E.B. DuBois, and many other cultural, social, and intellectual luminaries of the Roaring '20s.
A key component of the conversation was the importance of owning your own narrative and the impact of preserving familial legacy through historical documentation. Bundles also touched on her creative process when navigating writing and said she always wants to ensure that accurate research is at the center of her work.
Bundles shared an excerpt from the book, sharing how A'Lelia Walker hosted a salon for Columbia’s International Poetry Group in 1929. Fun fact: Bundles also spoke about the influence of her Columbia Journalism School Professor Phyllis Garland, who inspired her to write about her family’s legacy.
Check out the photos below from the Dec. 2 event!
About the Speakers
A’Lelia Bundles is a former trustee of Columbia University and the namesake of the A’Lelia Bundles Community Scholars Program, which is administered by Columbia's Office of Public Affairs and the School of Professional Studies. She is the author of five books, including "Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance" and "On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker," a New York Times "Notable Book" about her entrepreneurial great-great-grandmother, which is the fact-based biography that inspired "Self Made," a fictional four-part Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer.
Eric K. Washington is a Columbia University A’Lelia Bundles Community Scholar. He was a Leon Levy Biography Fellow in 2015–16, when he worked on his book "Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal" (Liveright, 2019), which was lauded as “an illuminating chronicle” in The Wall Street Journal for invoking “a fitting exemplar of Harlem’s ambitious Black middle class."
Learn More About the Bundles Scholars
Want to learn more about the A'Lelia Bundles Community Scholars program at Columbia? You can find more information about this year's current cohort here, and information about the application, which opens in February 2026, here.