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TWWBF2021 Participant Cheryl Woodruff Brooks: Golden Beauty Boss


Golden Beauty Boss, The Story of Madame Sara Spencer Washington and the Apex Empire by Cheryl Woodruff Brooks*  
Non-fiction biography  
Sunbury Press, 2020 


Get comfortable and prepare to journey back to the early 1900s when a brilliant, entrepreneurial young Black woman named Sara Phillips crowned herself Madame Sara Spencer Washington in the tradition of Madame C. J. Walker and Annie Turnbo-Malone, two business people who mentored and inspired her as she became their peer. The author of Golden Beauty Boss invites readers to share in her amazement at the cascading series of revelations her research (for her Chicken Bone Beach project) uncovered about this little-known titan of Beauty Culture, business innovation, and success. By providing broad historical context that includes Black American, civil rights, women's, military, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic history as critical facets of overall U. S. history, the scope of Madame Spencer Washington’s accomplishments is rendered as even more noteworthy. Apex News and Hair Company included multiple beauty schools, inventions, patents, manufacturing, commercial and residential real estate. Golden Beauty Boss is nearly as much business primer as it is a biography. Acknowledgements, an introduction, seven chapters that include archival photos and documents, and a comprehensive selected bibliography offer their intriguing details and milestones of this compelling success story shared in the personable style of knowledgeable friends engaged in an informal, yet focused intellectual exchange.  

*The author is not related to this reviewer or to the founder of The Write Women Book Fest. 


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