Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker

Product Description

Now a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer,
Self Made
(formerly titled
On Her Own Ground
) is the first full-scale biography of “one of the great success stories of American history” (
The Philadelphia Inquirer
), Madam C.J. Walker—the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist—by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles.

The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Sarah Breedlove—who would become known as Madam C. J. Walker—was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then—with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women—everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth unprecedented among black women, and devoting her life to philanthropy and social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great early-twentieth-century political figures such as Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington.

Review

“A fascinating book about a fascinating woman.”

—USA Today

“The life of Madam C. J. Walker is one of the great success stories of American history. . . . [This is] the first full-blown biography of an amazing woman.”

—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Well-paced and well-written . . . as much social history as biography, filled with the detail and texture of culture and politics.”

—The New York Times

About the Author

A’Lelia Bundles, author of 
On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker, is Walker’s biographer and great-great-granddaughter.
Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker, the fictional four-part Netflix series inspired by this
New York Times Notable Book and starring Octavia Spencer, premiered in the number one slot during its first weekend in 2020. She is chair emerita of the National Archives Foundation and a former ABC News Washington deputy bureau chief. She lives in Washington, DC. Visit her website at ALeliaBundles.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: Freedom Baby

CHAPTER 1
Freedom Baby

Into a time of destitution and aspiration, of mayhem and promise, Sarah Breedlove was born two days before Christmas 1867. It was a Yuletide that offered her parents, Owen and Minerva, no other gifts. An open-hearth fireplace provided the only source of warmth and light in their sloped-roof cyprus cabin. No official document recorded Sarah’s birth. No newspaper notice heralded her arrival. No lacy gown enveloped her tiny cocoa body.

To the world beyond her family’s rented plot of ground in Delta, Louisiana, Sarah was just another black baby destined for drudgery and ignorance. But to her parents, she symbolized hope. Unlike her older siblings—Louvenia, Owen, Jr., Alexander and James—Sarah had been born free just a few days shy of the Emancipation Proclamation’s fifth anniversary. Still, her parents’ lives were unlikely to change anytime soon. For the Breedloves, even hope had its limits.

Tethered to this space for more than two decades—first as slaves, then as free people—they knew what to expect from its seasonal patterns. Spring rains almost always split the levees, transforming land to sea until the floods receded from their grassless yard to reveal a soppy stew, flush with annual deposits of soil from the northern banks of the Mississippi River. Summer dry spells sucked the moist dirt until it turned to dust. Steamy autumns filled creamy-white cotton fields with swarms of sweating ebony backs, blistered feet and bloody, cracked cuticles. On a predictable cycle, wind, water and heat, then flies, mosquitoes and gnats, streamed through the slits and gaps of their rickety home.

Beyond the nearby levee, the syrupy mile-wide river formed a liquid highway, bringing news and commerce like blood transfusions from New Orlea