Six Bridges Book Festival

A'Lelia Bundles & Juanita Tolliver

PRESENTERS: A'Lelia Bundles & Juanita Tolliver
BOOKS: Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance & A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics

MODERATOR: Jessica McDaniel

About the authors:

A’Lelia Bundles is the author of Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, the first major biography of her great-grandmother, and of 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. Bundles is a former ABC News executive, an Emmy-winning NBC News producer, founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives, and a member of several nonprofit boards including Harvard’s Schlesinger Library.

Juanita Tolliver is an MSNBC political analyst, an opinion contributor for TheGrio, and a contributor for SiriusXM Progress. Previously, she served as the director of campaigns at the Center for American Progress. She is a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

About the books:

Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance is a vibrant, nuanced, deeply researched biography of a woman whose glamorous soirees helped define uptown New York’s cultural and social scene during the 1920s. Best known as the only child of hair care entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker, she was an internationally famous heiress and arts patron in her own right, who entertained the era’s most famous artists, writers, musicians and actors at her Dark Tower salon.

A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics spotlights the legendary party hosted by legendary actress and singer Diahann Carroll for New York Representative Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign (the first such campaign for a Black woman), which changed the playing field for Black women in politics. Zooming in on one party attendee per chapter, A More Perfect Party brings this whimsical event out of the margins of history to demonstrate that there is an opportunity for all of us to fight for a better nation and return power to the people.

Sponsored by ESSE Purse Museum & Store with additional support from the CALS Distinguished Lecture Fund in honor of Betsey Wright