Joy Goddess: A Book Launch and Conversation

The Schomburg Center is pleased to present award-winning biographer A’Lelia Bundles’s new book, JOY GODDESS: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, a vibrant, deeply researched biography of A’Lelia Walker – daughter of Madam C. J. Walker and herself a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance – written by her journalist great-granddaughter. Bundles will be in conversation with curator, photographer, and scholar, Dr. Deborah Willis. Following the conversation, a special advance book signing will follow. The book, published by Scribner, is on sale June 10, 2025.

This program is a pre-Schomburg Centennial Festival event presented in person and streamed to our global audience online on YouTube.com/TheSchomburgCenter.

Publishing just in time for the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, JOY GODDESS transports readers into the rarely seen world of the educated Black elite professionals who created a haven in uptown Manhattan at a time when racial discrimination in America was rampant, when “Harlem was as gay as it was Black,” when unprecedented interracial awards dinners sealed book deals and launched careers, and when the explosive creativity of Harlem changed America’s culture forever.

A’LELIA BUNDLES is the author of New York Times Notable Book and bestseller On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker, a BCALA Honor Book, a Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award finalist and the Association of Black Women Historians’ Letitia Woods Brown Prize winner. A former ABC News Washington, DC deputy bureau chief and an Emmy Award and du Pont Gold Baton-winning television news producer, she participated in residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell while writing Joy Goddess.

Dr. Deborah Willis is Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University where her research examines photography’s multifaceted histories, visual culture, contemporary women photographers and beauty. She is also the director of NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture/Institute for African American Affairs. A MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has pursued a dual professional career as an art photographer and as one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curator of African diasporic cultures.

Accessibility requests can be made by e-mail YWNjZXNzaWJpbGl0eSB8IG55cGwgISBvcmc=.

Copies of JOY GODDESS: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance will be available for purchase from the Schomburg Shop in Harlem.

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Events are free and open to all, but due to space constraints registration is requested. Registered guests are given priority check-in 15 to 30 minutes before start time. After the event starts all registered seats are released regardless of registration, so we recommend that you arrive early. We generally overbook to ensure a full house.

GUESTS Please note that holding seats in the Langston Hughes Auditorium is strictly prohibited and there is no food or drinks allowed anywhere in the Schomburg Center.

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PRESS Please send all press inquiries (photo, video, interviews, audio-recording, etc) at least 24-hours before the day of the program to Leah Drayton at bGVhaGRyYXl0b24gfCBueXBsICEgb3Jn.

Please note that professional video recordings are prohibited without expressed consent.

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