Madam C.J. Walker: The Making of an American Icon

Madam C. J. Walker's life story is exhaustively detailed in this biography, which explores her remarkable acts of self-fashioning and how she enabled a new generation of African Americans to bridge the gap between a nineteenth-century agrarian past and a twentieth-century future as urban-dwelling consumers.

Format: Hardback
Length: 166 pages
Publication date: 29 March 2021
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Madam C. J. Walker, a renowned figure in American history, is celebrated for her rags-to-riches story. Born to former slaves in the Louisiana Delta after the Civil War, she married at fourteen and became a widow at twenty. Walker's life took a dramatic turn when she became a laundress, working in harsh conditions that mirrored the lives of countless African American women. However, by the time of her death in 1919, Walker had transformed herself into one of the most famous African American figures in the nation. She owned and presided over a hair-care empire and was a philanthropist with enough wealth to own a country estate near the Rockefellers in the prestigious New York town of Irvington-on-Hudson. In this biography, Erica Ball places Walker's remarkable life story in the context of her times, analyzing her remarkable acts of self-fashioning and exploring how Walker and the Walker brand enabled a new generation of African Americans to bridge the gap between a nineteenth-century agrarian past and a twentieth-century future as urban-dwelling consumers.

Weight: 400g
Dimension: 159 x 235 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781442260382