Richard Pryor made a career out of saying things other people wouldn’t dare say. His groundbreaking comedy confronted race, racism and American life with a bluntness that made him one of the most influential performers of his generation.
But one word in particular, deeply embedded in his comedy and in the country’s history, would become the subject of a very different kind of examination by his daughter.
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, a historian and professor at Smith College, explores the complicated history of the n-word, its place in her father’s public and private life, and its influence on her own identity in her new book, “Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me.”…