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On Her Own Ground
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
She was the daughter of slaves, married at 14, a widow with a baby daughter at 20. But, by the time that she was 40, Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) was making as much money as a white corporate executive, thanks to her popular hair-care products for black women and her brilliance at marketing them. She created a workforce of sales agents that gave African American women job options other than being washerwomen or domestics. As her prominence and wealth increased, she became a generous benefactor of black educational institutions, and such a staunch supporter of the antilynching movement that the State Department labeled her a "race agitator" and denied her a passport in 1919. Yet, she had plenty of time for fun, too; she built a lavish mansion (near John D. Rockefeller's) in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, and her daughter Lelia entertained the Harlem Renaissance elite in a spectacular Manhattan townhouse that was renovated with revenues from the company's New York branch. Author A'Lelia Bundles, a veteran television journalist and Madam Walker's descendant, reminds us that controversy over straightened hair has raged within the black community for a century, and that the businesswoman insisted that her aim never was to "de-kink" her customers' tresses, but instead to "grow" them through proper care, frequent washing, and improved nutrition. Bundles seamlessly weaves together her great-great-grandmother's remarkable personal odyssey with the broader outlines of African American struggle in the early 20th century, to create a colorful biography that's also a fascinating social history. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Bundles, the great-great-granddaughter of America's first black woman millionaire, evinces great affection for her famous relative, even if she doesn't overcome a major hurdle: Madam Walker kept her intimate life so private that there's not much to say about it. In the first chapters, Bundles uses a lot of awkward "possibly"s and "perhaps"s as she speculates about her subject's motivations and feelings. Once into the swing of Madam Walker's career, however, Bundles sidesteps the problem by turning social historian, leaving questions of love and sex aside. Walker's trajectory from uneducated washerwoman to hair-care industry magnate becomes the organizing element for a larger mosaic of black life in America, from Reconstruction through the founding of the NAACP in 1909. There's solid business history here, too, as Madam Walker figures out how to make her kitchen industry into a national empire by franchising it. Walker's philanthropy and social consciousness (working for the antilynching and the African anticolonial movements, for example) made her an important powerbroker in the black community. With fascinating details on benevolent and fraternal organizations, urban churches, black colleges, political movements and government surveillance of those involved in them, Bundles takes readers on an engrossing tour of a neglected corner of American history. Agent, Gail Ross. (Feb. 1) Fore
She was the daughter of slaves, married at 14, a widow with a baby daughter at 20. But, by the time that she was 40, Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) was making as much money as a white corporate executive, thanks to her popular hair-care products for black women and her brilliance at marketing them. She created a workforce of sales agents that gave African American women job options other than being washerwomen or domestics. As her prominence and wealth increased, she became a generous benefactor of black educational institutions, and such a staunch supporter of the antilynching movement that the State Department labeled her a "race agitator" and denied her a passport in 1919. Yet, she had plenty of time for fun, too; she built a lavish mansion (near John D. Rockefeller's) in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, and her daughter Lelia entertained the Harlem Renaissance elite in a spectacular Manhattan townhouse that was renovated with revenues from the company's New York branch. Author A'Lelia Bundles, a veteran television journalist and Madam Walker's descendant, reminds us that controversy over straightened hair has raged within the black community for a century, and that the businesswoman insisted that her aim never was to "de-kink" her customers' tresses, but instead to "grow" them through proper care, frequent washing, and improved nutrition. Bundles seamlessly weaves together her great-great-grandmother's remarkable personal odyssey with the broader outlines of African American struggle in the early 20th century, to create a colorful biography that's also a fascinating social history. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Bundles, the great-great-granddaughter of America's first black woman millionaire, evinces great affection for her famous relative, even if she doesn't overcome a major hurdle: Madam Walker kept her intimate life so private that there's not much to say about it. In the first chapters, Bundles uses a lot of awkward "possibly"s and "perhaps"s as she speculates about her subject's motivations and feelings. Once into the swing of Madam Walker's career, however, Bundles sidesteps the problem by turning social historian, leaving questions of love and sex aside. Walker's trajectory from uneducated washerwoman to hair-care industry magnate becomes the organizing element for a larger mosaic of black life in America, from Reconstruction through the founding of the NAACP in 1909. There's solid business history here, too, as Madam Walker figures out how to make her kitchen industry into a national empire by franchising it. Walker's philanthropy and social consciousness (working for the antilynching and the African anticolonial movements, for example) made her an important powerbroker in the black community. With fascinating details on benevolent and fraternal organizations, urban churches, black colleges, political movements and government surveillance of those involved in them, Bundles takes readers on an engrossing tour of a neglected corner of American history. Agent, Gail Ross. (Feb. 1) Fore