Richard Pryor's daughter studies the N-word — a word he used, then disavowed

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. About a decade ago, my guest, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, was on the road as one of the country's leading scholars of the most charged racial slur in American English, the N-word. A history professor at Smith College, Pryor was giving lectures on the N-word and the use of it during slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement and the hip-hop generation. But every night after the lectures ended, she'd have this weird reoccurring dream about her father saying something to her that she couldn't quite understand. Her father is the late Richard Pryor, the legendary comedian who in the '70s took this divisive word and made it the engine of his stand-up. Here he is in 1968 in his first comedy album with a bit about a Black superhero.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RICHARD PRYOR: I always thought, why they never have a hero, a Black hero? man, I always wanted to go to movies and see a Black hero. I figured out maybe someday on television, they'll have it, man. Like you see on television, he'll come out. (Vocalizing) Look up in the sky.

(LAUGHTER)

R PRYOR: It's a crow.

(LAUGHTER)

R PRYOR: It's a bat.

(LAUGHTER)

R PRYOR: No, it's Super [expletive].

(LAUGHTER)

R PRYOR: (Vocalizing).

MOSLEY: And yet, for all of Richard Pryor's influence on American comedy and music and culture, his daughter Elizabeth never told a single audience in her academic circles that Pryor was her father. Her new book, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me," is part memoir, part history of a word that her father, late in his career, swore he'd never say again and that his daughter has been trying to understand ever since. Elizabeth, welcome to FRESH AIR.

ELIZABETH STORDEUR PRYOR: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

MOSLEY: You're a leading scholar in the N-word. Your father is probably one of the most famous people ever to use the word in his stand-up. And here you are living this life, not telling anyone that he was your father. I actually want you to read an excerpt from the book. The first time you told folks, it was at a Smith talk, and it was 2016, so not that long ago. Can I have you read that passage?

E PRYOR: Sure.

(Reading) I started with a joke. Out of nowhere, an eager student in my class asked, have you seen "Blazing Saddles"? Then I leaned forward with a psst, which was funny because my father, who happens to be Richard Pryor, co-wrote the movie. The audience roared. It was the first time I'd ever said publicly that I was Richard Pryor's daughter. I wasn't just revealing a family connection. My father was an essential part of the work I was doing. He used his platform to influence public discourse about American racism, and he used the N-word to do it.

MOSLEY: Thank you for reading that. Why did it take you so long, Elizabeth, to tell folks your dad is Richard Pryor?

E PRYOR: I mean, that's a great question. I think I was the last person to know that this connection mattered. I kept, you know, feeling that feeling of coincidence. And the end of his life had been really hard and painful. I kind of wanted to keep it to myself. I didn't want to hear those recurring overtures that people made. You know, they became overly intimate in asking me about the relationship that was fraught and complicated. So I kept it close to the chest.

MOSLEY: I was also wondering to be a child of a famous person and someone as famous as Richard Pryor, there has to also be an identity issue, too, right? You're your own person in academia, and he is known as a comedian. Was there ever that tension for you of wanting to make a name for yourself?

E PRYOR: I felt like if I was going to own my father, it had to be organic and real. Like, I didn't feel comfortable just bragging about it, even though I should have. I mean, there's a lot to brag about there, but it just wasn't my nature. I wanted it to make sense if I was talking about him. And it's - this is what this journey was all about. It ended up making sense. I mean, I was a scholar of the N-word, and so, obviously, is he.

MOSLEY: I want to get to something that happened six years before that speech. In your own classroom, you were a traveling historian. So the N-word wasn't necessarily your subject early on. But you were teaching the Fugitive Slave Act when a student quoted a line from "Blazing Saddles." And you froze in that moment. Tell us a little bit about that moment.

E PRYOR: Right. So this was a student I liked so much. I adored her. And I was, you know, teaching, and I was feeling like I was in - I had my vibe going in the classroom, and I asked - you know, she was, like, raising her hand, like, so high, and I was like, what you thinking? And she said, have you seen "Blazing Saddles"? And that threw me off 'cause I thought she was about to out me as Richard Pryor's daughter. I didn't get that she was actually - no, she was trying to connect to my lecture. So I moved on quickly, and maybe a little rudely, to be honest.

And then she raised her hand again, and before I could even get a chance to call on her, she blurted out a line that quoted a disparaging word for people of Chinese descent. And also, she said the actual N-word. And I did. I froze, because I'd thought about how I wanted to negotiate the word in my own life as a teacher, whether I would use it or not in class. I decided I wouldn't. But I never thought about what happens when it comes knocking uninvited.

MOSLEY: The thing about this story, too, is that this class wasn't just all white. The student was a white student. You moved on from it, but there was a Black student, or Black students, in the class, too. What was their reaction?

E PRYOR: I mean, I didn't really quite move on from it. I just kind of, like - like a deer in the headlights, stood in front of everybody and was like, uh - uh, uh, uh. You know, that was sort of my reaction. I was really worried about the Black students. I felt like they were thinking I was letting them down 'cause I was letting this happen. And it was just something I had never considered when I thought about teaching, is what happens when the racism that we study and we teach comes in inadvertently into the space and has a real impact? How do I work through that in the moment?

MOSLEY: Yeah. That classroom moment was really important for you. How would you describe it? Was it like a seed for you? Was it the moment where things kind of started to break apart?

E PRYOR: I mean, it was definitely a catalyst. I think about it as, like, a three-pronged catalyst. In that moment, I had to look at what was happening in me personally, I started thinking, do I even really know what this word means? Like, what just happened? Like, why? So I started thinking about the history, and I started thinking about my teaching. And all of those pieces kind of happened at the same time around the N-word. And I think deeply, starting to chart my own life story in a way by the N-word. Like, the N-word is kind of a geography of my life story.

MOSLEY: Yeah. 'Cause what had been your relationship up until that moment with the N-word? Had you ever used it? Had you heard it in your life? What was your relationship to it?

E PRYOR: I mean, I had a super complicated relationship to it. My mother was white. My father was obviously Black and Richard Pryor. He used it on stage. One of the first meaningful conversations I ever had with him as a little girl, he told me, don't let nobody ever call you that. And then he used it. And then his friends used it. And I was trying to figure that out, you know? So - and then I would hear different reactions of people in my life using it like, for example, like kids on the schoolyard. But the teachers didn't tell them to - you know, they didn't get in trouble the way they did with other swear words. And yet, to me, this was the worst swear word because my father said don't let anybody ever call you that. This is something you better knock somebody out if they use with you. And you've got to not only protect yourself but other Black people, too.

MOSLEY: He's telling you, don't let anybody ever call you that. And yet, there is the, some might say, the hypocrisy or the contradiction that then he uses the word in a subversive way.

E PRYOR: I mean, I think it's really important to emphasize that when I'm saying that he used the word, that it was in the subversive way, that it was the language of protest and that he was building on a Black tradition of protest - that Black people had used this word kind of as, you know, a slap in the face to white racism. You know, we know how to take our punches and our knocks. And we're not afraid of this thing that you're trying to demean us as. And so bringing that use, the way that Black people perceived of the N-word, onto stage was really powerful in the 1970s. People weren't really doing that. But always as a form of resistance and protest, not in the way that, you know, white racists had traditionally used the word.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, a history professor at Smith College and the daughter of legendary comedian Richard Pryor. Her new book, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE INTERNET SONG, "STAY THE NIGHT")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. And today, I am talking with Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, historian and daughter of Richard Pryor, and author of "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me." It is part memoir and part history of one of the most divisive words in the English language, a word her father later in his career swore he would never say again.

I should also say for the audience, we're saying the N-word. But that was not a phrase that was even used back then, you know? We're doing that because we can't say the word on air. And, you know, we don't generally say the word. But it's really interesting how that phrase, the N-word, has become the way that we can describe it, which is fairly new, right?

E PRYOR: I mean, yeah. I had a really funny conversation with my daughter, who was born in 1998. And when she was in college, she went to a college about half an hour from the college where I teach, Smith College. And she would come over and we'd do homework together. So I had a bunch of things pinned on the wall for this research, and one of them was, when did people first started saying the phrase the N-word? And she said to me, Mom, what do you mean when did people first start using the phrase the N-word? And I was like, what do you mean when did people start? Because - and I asked my students, too. And they - never dawned on them that this wasn't something.

I didn't grow up with that. It's that people either said the N-word or they didn't. But they didn't say the phrase, the N-word, right? But my children grew up in an era where there's a surrogate phrase to replace it. And that puts you in a different relationship with that word and the meaning of that word. So it was really interesting. And I discovered that, you know, the big turning point was the O.J. Simpson trial, really. I mean, Black activists had been using the phrase the N-word in the late '80s and early '90s. But the O.J. Simpson trial and some pretrial motions is what put that phrase on the map.

MOSLEY: Yeah, it became then part of the lexicon to use. Yeah.

E PRYOR: That phrase. And so when I watched the news clippings from them, there are newscasters, white newscasters on the news just saying the N-word, the actual word before that. ABC News, you know, just saying it.

MOSLEY: There's actually an interview that was probably one of the more powerful interviews your dad ever did with Barbara Walters, 1979. They're sitting on a couch very close together, almost eye to eye. And she asks him about the N-word. And she does - she says, I don't know if I can say it, but then she says it. Let's listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BARBARA WALTERS: When you're onstage, you talk about - see, it's hard for me to say. I was going to say, you talk about [expletive]. I can't - you can say it. I can't say it. I think it's...

R PRYOR: You just said it.

WALTERS: Yeah, but I feel so uncomfortable.

R PRYOR: You said it very good. Well, good.

WALTERS: OK.

R PRYOR: You just said it pretty good. This not the first time you said it.

(LAUGHTER)

WALTERS: Yes, it is.

R PRYOR: Are we going to end up liking each other after this?

WALTERS: I don't know.

R PRYOR: Well, good. I'm glad. It's still out there.

WALTERS: What do you think?

R PRYOR: I don't know. See, I like it like that. I like it like, you get to know me, or you can choose for yourself whether you really like Richard or not.

WALTERS: Done that.

R PRYOR: There's nothing phony about me. There's nothing...

WALTERS: I started out - yeah.

R PRYOR: I'm not laying out there...

WALTERS: No. No, you're not.

R PRYOR: ...All smooth and soft where you can say, oh, I really like that guy. You know, that Richard is not really bad as I thought. No, you say...

WALTERS: Yeah, I think that...

R PRYOR: ...I don't like the [expletive], period.

(LAUGHTER)

WALTERS: That's what you say. I don't. I don't say I don't like the [expletive], period.

R PRYOR: What do you say, baby?

WALTERS: I say, maybe I don't like you.

R PRYOR: Hey, how about that?

WALTERS: But not because you're Black. Or what do I say? You were...

R PRYOR: You like me. You like me.

WALTERS: Right now, I like you. Yeah. Yeah.

R PRYOR: I know you do. It's a good thing.

WALTERS: And right now, you like me. We're OK.

R PRYOR: Yeah. Yeah.

E PRYOR: (Laughter).

MOSLEY: That was Barbara Walters and Richard Pryor, 1979. Very pivotal interview. It's interesting. She says she doesn't know if she could say it, but she says it. And then she says it again because there was not that phrase, the N-word, to actually say the thing. You are in the room. It's interesting. I hear the people laughing. Take us to that room. You were how old?

E PRYOR: I was 11 or 12. Yeah. Yeah.

MOSLEY: Yeah. Yeah.

E PRYOR: And they filmed the episode in my dad's living room. And, you know, they were doing this conversation. And I remember getting really stressed out during the conversation because my father's being light-hearted and funny, but he's also not. I mean, he's being very direct with her. You know, the fact that she says, I can't say that word, I don't say that word - he said, you just said it, and you said it very good. You've said it before.

MOSLEY: Twelve years old, you're interpreting this. And hearing that exchange, you felt stressed. But did you also understand where you sat in the moment about the word?

E PRYOR: I feel what's powerful about today is that I'm even allowed to question whether people use this word around me or not. And I think there was something - my dad was sort of doing this work by challenging her. But even so, he couldn't say what somebody might say today, which is, please don't say that, right? Like, what it conjured in that moment between them, which must've been powerful and real for him - I mean, she's a very, as I describe her, a very pretty, pink, white lady in pink smelling of pink, you know? And she uses this word with him in that moment. And, I mean, he does a good job of kind of calling her out. But it's not - it's still light. Like, it's not like you really - you're doing work right now. You're being racist. Like, you actually are being racist, saying this. And so I think that today, I could do that. My dad didn't really have that language, even as he was trying to create it.

MOSLEY: Your dad was really upset about that interview, though, with Barbara Walters.

E PRYOR: He was. He was. It was, you know, had the potential of being a life-changing moment for him. And I think it was, ultimately. But he revealed not just in that part, but he talked a lot about his childhood. He talked about doing drugs. He talked about - openly, and...

MOSLEY: He felt like he revealed too much.

E PRYOR: That's right.

MOSLEY: Your father is famous, though, for being so vulnerable. He was born in Peoria. He was raised in a brothel. His mother worked in the brothel. He watched his father beat his mother. He was abused. His mother left when he was 10. And he put that all together in a way that, like, no one had ever seen before where we were laughing almost to keep from crying. When did you first come to see or understand that your father had these broken parts of him?

E PRYOR: Honestly, I think it was partially in the - I knew it. Of course, I've heard the comedy. You know, people would tell me, you know, your father was raised in a brothel. I don't remember him ever saying that to me. I mean, I certainly wasn't introduced to my great-grandmother. You know, is this is Mama, she's a madame. She runs a brothel, right? This is my great-grandmother. You know, she, you know, cooked great food and was mean. Like, that's what I knew about her. But I do think, in part, it was the process of writing this book. Like, there was something about my memories that had been locked in childhood. I don't know if this makes sense to people, but I had only ever come in contact with them as, like, the 11-year-old.

And it was as a woman, as a professor, as a mother myself, that I came to this to understand, like, holy moly. Like, it's not the sex work 'cause, like, I think there are a lot of people who are raised around sex work and, you know, have their stories to tell as children, but it was the vulnerability of that for him that he didn't know how to navigate it and the brilliance of being able to tell those stories to people and make them funny. And not just funny, like, laugh at me, but also universal. Like, people could relate, like, about parenting. Like, he described his father as an 11 o'clock N-word 'cause he had to be home by 11 o'clock even though the party didn't start till 11:30. You know, like, these are, you know, everybody could relate to that. But he was describing a very harsh and scary man when he did it.

MOSLEY: There's this tender moment where you were 11 years old, and there's this poem that you'd written for his 38th birthday. He asked you to read it to the family. Can I have you read it now?

E PRYOR: Sure. (Reading) My daddy is the famous Richard Pryor. Yes, how famous, how famous. Of course I love him, and I'll always be proud, but I really get sick of all the crowds. I think he spends all his day long trying to help someone who started out wrong. He never seems happy, though always so sad. Now they remember him that he's cool and he's bad. He's got the money to do what he wants. Some people want the money to do what they want. They hurt him, they slap him inside-out. But that doesn't matter 'cause he's Richard Pryor, no doubt. It doesn't matter. It's the money that counts. This is a story so sad and so true. He has trouble picking his friends, and that makes him blue, my daddy.

MOSLEY: That's my guest, Elizabeth Pryor, reading a poem she wrote for her dad, Richard Pryor, when she was 11 years old. He was so moved by it he carried it in his pocket for weeks.

You, now, as a woman, reading this and knowing the totality of who he was now through this new lens, why do you think he was so moved from it, aside from the fact that you were his daughter?

E PRYOR: I don't know. I'm thinking that - I haven't really thought about this before, but I feel like my father had a superpower of really being able to see people. Really being able to see them and understand them, you know, and I feel like maybe he felt seen, too. And that was important to him as a person who could see. Yeah.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. Our guest today is scholar and author Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DEEP BLUE ORGAN TRIO'S "YOU HAVEN'T DONE NOTHIN'")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley, and my guest is Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, a history professor at Smith College, the daughter of legendary comedian Richard Pryor, who fathered seven children over the course of his life. Elizabeth is the author of "Colored Travelers: Mobility And The Fight For Citizenship Before The Civil War," a study about how Black Americans were fighting for their right to travel more than a hundred years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Her new book, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me," is part memoir and part history of one of the most divisive words in the English language - a word her father, later in his career, swore he would never say again.

He told you this story of the first time he got a laugh from his family.

E PRYOR: Yeah.

MOSLEY: Can you share? Can you share that?

E PRYOR: He told me a story about being 5 years old, and I don't know why, but he's wearing a little cowboy suit. And he was in front of the house, and all the people were there - the - you know, his grandmother, all the sex, you know, workers, and his father and his uncle, and he slipped in dog poop and they just start cracking up. And so he got up and he made himself slip in it again, and they couldn't stop laughing and so he did it again and again. And it's pretty painful to think of the lengths that he felt that he needed to go to get their adoration and attention.

MOSLEY: What do you take from that story?

E PRYOR: I mean, I take that, and also, you know, just his drive to be funny. I asked him, did you know you were funny? And he said, you know, I knew little else, but that I knew.

MOSLEY: You didn't actually meet your dad till you were 6 years old.

E PRYOR: Yeah.

MOSLEY: And so there's a lot that you didn't know about their relationship leading up to it, but your mom wrote him a letter about you, and that's how the meeting came about. Yeah. Do you remember that first meeting?

E PRYOR: Oh, yes. I remember we were in Newark, New Jersey. We'd - my first time flying on a plane that I remembered. And I come to this hotel room and my mom is acting kind of - I don't know. My mom was very in control of herself a lot of the times, but she was acting nervous. And we knocked on the door of a hotel room, and he opened in a towel and I was like, this is my father? Like, not only do I get a father, but I get this guy (ph)? What? Like, I just felt like I won - I loved him immediately, instantly. His eyes were so warm, and he was so handsome and I just fell head over heels.

MOSLEY: You saw your face in him.

E PRYOR: I saw my face. I saw my face. I saw - like, everybody around me was white, really. And nobody ever said to me, you're different because you're not white, in my family, but it was there. And I saw him and I was like, wait a minute, there's something here between us. And I just - yeah. And that happened more and more. Even though there were some things about him that I couldn't relate to at all, of course - his childhood and whatnot - but there was some way he created a bridge immediately between us and invited me to cross over.

MOSLEY: Can you describe the differences in households? So you're - majority of the time you were raised in Massachusetts - a Jewish family, Jewish customs - and then you'd go see your dad.

E PRYOR: Right. So my mom actually lived in LA, but the Jewish customs were there.

MOSLEY: Yeah.

E PRYOR: I mean, we did the Jewish holidays, she shopped at Loehmann's and Marshalls, we had certain values, my mother used Yiddish words, like, my Kushi (ph) grandmother who knitted socks. You know, like, that was, like, one part of my family. And then my father's was - you know, he'd just have all these people, like, loud and laughing around the - he had a - he had 2 1/2 acres, a swimming pool, a guest house, a tennis court. And everybody was around the kitchen table - you know? - and trying to get his attention, talking - you know, talking smack, loud and telling jokes and hoping that my father was going to be impressed by them, I think now, looking back. There were drugs around the house, alcohol. My mother didn't drink or use drugs.

There was a lot of confusion, like, you know, not knowing who's there and who matters. And, you know, it was hard to get my father's attention. He was also all over the place. You know, he was on stage, he was in his head, he was depressed. He was - you know, he was down, he was up. I mean, you know, he was traveling. So people did what they could to try to get his attention. I think my siblings and I would all agree that that was a standard experience growing up in his house.

MOSLEY: Were you vying for his attention as his child?

E PRYOR: Always.

MOSLEY: What were the ways you would try to get it?

E PRYOR: I wanted to be smart enough and creative enough. And I would try to show off. I did theater. I did improv. He would come to my plays and come to my performances. Tried to get intellectual with him, like when I was in college and he gave me, like - I had a Black awakening and he basically, like, sent me some stuff so I could awake Blackly (ph), I guess.

(LAUGHTER)

MOSLEY: When you got to college, yeah.

E PRYOR: When I got to college.

MOSLEY: Stuff like what? Like books and stuff?

E PRYOR: Yeah. He sent me the documentary on Malcolm X that had been filmed, I think, in 1972. And then he sent me The Last Poets, which actually used the N-word a ton - "N-words Are Scared Of Revolution (ph)" - you know, to listen to. And I did - I felt like he was inviting me into a secret world, and I wanted to go there.

MOSLEY: But there was this moment where, as you were trying - you were trying to get his attention, you were trying to be these things, and you initially wanted him to see you as a creative, but it sounds like he actually did see you as an intellectual, but at the time, you didn't realize that that was a currency. You didn't realize that that was a virtue that he valued in you. When did you come to understand that?

E PRYOR: Writing the book.

MOSLEY: Oh, really?

E PRYOR: (Laughter) Yeah.

MOSLEY: Throughout your entire life with him, you didn't really see that he felt...

E PRYOR: Not...

MOSLEY: ...That way?

E PRYOR: Not really. Not really. And people would tell me all the time, he's so proud of you that you went to college. Your dad was always proud of that. He was so smart in his way and didn't go to college that I kind of thought he thought college was kind of like an indulgence. But I do remember at the end of his life, when he couldn't speak anymore, I would go over and read from the narrative of Frederick Douglass to him. And I could see that he was feeling proud in those moments - of Frederick Douglass and of being read Frederick Douglass by me. Yeah.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, a history professor at Smith College and the daughter of legendary comedian Richard Pryor. Her new book, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF RAY CHARLES' "THE RAY")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR, and today, I am talking with Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, historian and daughter of Richard Pryor and author of "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me." It is part memoir and part history of one of the most divisive words in the English language, a word her father, later in his career, swore he would never say again.

There's something life-changing that happened to you after that Barbara Walters interview. You wanted to clarify during the interview that he had said he had only been married a certain amount of times, three times. And you corrected him, and then he corrected you.

E PRYOR: Yeah. I was always under the impression that my father had been married four times. And he said three during the interview. And he told me in very ungentle way that he had never been married to my mother. It shattered my world only because they both had told me that. I had the impression from both of them that that was the case. And I actually recently found a news clipping from, like - I don't know, it must be the mid-'70s or something - where my father says it in a - you know, a newspaper article or something that, you know, his three wives, his three exes, but he wasn't, in fact, married to my mom. And that was earth-shattering.

MOSLEY: It was earth-shattering because at the time, as well, I mean, we have a different view. Today, we may think, like, it's not a big deal. But back then, it felt like maybe what?

E PRYOR: I think it felt like I didn't exist in a way and that maybe I wasn't really his child, not that I wasn't - and I don't mean this about paternity, something else - like, that I wouldn't be part of the family or whatever. Something like that.

MOSLEY: Yeah.

E PRYOR: I have to say, God bless my father, made a lot of mistakes, but never once made me feel that way. Made a lot of mistakes, but not that one. Yeah.

MOSLEY: You went home and confronted your mother, and you guys got into a big fight.

E PRYOR: Yeah.

MOSLEY: And this fight, I mean, this was the fight of all fights, right?

E PRYOR: Yes. My mother was a fighter. She was a fighter, if nothing else. And she went for the jugular if she was losing. And she did that day, too.

MOSLEY: Yeah. Your mom pulled out that N-word on you.

E PRYOR: Yeah. Yes. My mother called me the N-word.

MOSLEY: How do you hold this woman who cared for you, is your mom and cared for you in all the ways that a mother cares but then also had this blind spot that when she was in a rage, she could say it and...

E PRYOR: Yeah.

MOSLEY: ...Said it to her own child?

E PRYOR: I never understood. I have to say, till her dying day, my mother never apologized for that. And I brought it up - I gave her plenty of chances (laughter) 'cause I brought it up a lot 'cause I just never forgot it. And it was one of those - I mean, I know, obviously, how could you forget it, but I never - it was never far away from my interactions with her. It was always there for me. You know, when I met my husband and we had our, you know, early, you know, pillow talk, that was - you know, that's the story that came up. It was always there. And it was hard to reconcile cause what's funny - and I hope readers will get this - is that my mother loved me so much. She really did.

MOSLEY: I think that's clear. But I was just wondering from you, what that tells you about the limits that maybe white people, even in close proximity, even having a Black child...

E PRYOR: Yeah.

MOSLEY: ...And understanding race and racism and the knife that that word can cause.

E PRYOR: Yeah.

MOSLEY: The knife and the wound.

E PRYOR: Yeah. I hear this all the time from people, people who don't want to be in interracial relationships or don't want to have those, you know, even interracial friendships 'cause they feel like, you know, when push comes to shove, somebody can say this to you. Now, I have to say, my husband is white. And I have never once ever and never will ever worry that this is even within the fragments of his mind. I know it's not. But for some people, like my mother, it was there.

MOSLEY: Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, a history professor at Smith College and the daughter of legendary comedian Richard Pryor. Her new book, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me." We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF GOMEZ SONG, "BUENA VISTA")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR, and today I am talking with Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, historian and daughter of Richard Pryor and author of "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me." It is part memoir and part history of one of the most divisive words in the English language - a word her father, later in his career, swore he would never say again.

Was there a reason why you didn't listen to much of your father's comedy before adulthood?

E PRYOR: So I was, like, 8 or 9 - right? - when his first Grammy Award-winning album came out. I did sneak a listen to it as (laughter) a child, but I had no idea what it meant. But as I got older, you know, a lot of - I mean, I saw "Superman" and "The Wiz" and, you know, "The Toy" - you know, these kind of more child-geared creative productions of his, but his comedy - and this is funny - I did see him even perform it. But just knowing his comedy, it felt like everybody who came up to me - I grew up - there are going to be people who are listening to this who have no idea who Richard Pryor is.

MOSLEY: That's true. Yeah.

E PRYOR: OK? And I grew up and that was, like, nobody because everybody knew who he was and they loved him and they thought that because of the vulnerability on stage and because of that work that he was their friend. And they probably were. And my dad loved that. He told me, you know, the only thing to worry about is when people stop doing that, right? But for me, I wanted to know him in a way that everybody else did not, and that was as a private person. And so knowing his comedy felt like it was pulling me away from knowing him as a private man.

MOSLEY: I also have to know how you felt about "Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling," which was a film that your dad wrote about his life. And he lays it all out. He lays it pretty bare. Do you remember when you first saw it?

E PRYOR: I do. I came home from college to see it. And I remember being so powerfully moved by it 'cause I thought - you know, this is, of course, after my father had this horrible episode - I don't know how to describe it - but where he burned, like, two-thirds of his body quite severely - they - we didn't know if he was going to live - while using drugs. And this was sort of his kind of reckoning with what brought him to that moment because it was only years later that he told me that he was actually - it was actually a suicide attempt, which I didn't know at the time. The family described it as the accident, which is why I struggle for the words even now.

MOSLEY: Right. The story had been publicly that he was freebasing on cocaine or drugs and there was a mishap, there was an accident and there was an explosion. But he sat you down to tell you that that wasn't actually true.

E PRYOR: Yeah.

MOSLEY: Yeah.

E PRYOR: Yeah. He pulled me aside and said he had to tell me the truth about what happened. And he just was so tired and he made that choice. Immediately changed his mind, you know, the minute, you know, the fire hit his body, but then it was too late.

MOSLEY: Did he ever talk about - 'cause, you know - so I rewatched it. I watched it as a child, I'll tell you, Elizabeth, and I think it was one of the most traumatic things of my life because I had such a parasocial relationship with him...

E PRYOR: (Laughter).

MOSLEY: ...Because he had done so many children's programs. And so then to see his life in totality as a 9-year-old, I was really scarred by that and I've not watched it since. But I watched it the other night...

E PRYOR: OK.

MOSLEY: ...And it was so revealing. It was so vulnerable and brave to share the dark parts of himself. But it was universally panned...

E PRYOR: It was.

MOSLEY: ...At the time. Did he ever talk about how he felt about that?

E PRYOR: He didn't, but I saw him decline. So I think the movie came out, I'm guessing 1986 right now. He was also diagnosed with MS in 1986, so it was, like, a kind of coming together. But I think about this vulnerability that you're talking about - what is it like to flay yourself open? And sometimes - I mean, when he did "Live In Concert" in 1979, it was universally beloved. It was the - comedic gold (ph), they described it as. He was, you know, the voice of a generation. And then just a few years later, also putting your life on the line creatively and it's panned. And what is it like when you are inside-out like that and, you know, susceptible to the criticism of other people, like, on your life? And I know that's what he did for a living, so of course, you know, he was public, but I do think about that a lot. I will see his work and see how vulnerable he is in a moment, and I was like, ah, that's why it was so hard for him.

MOSLEY: There's a pivotal moment in your father's career where he visits Africa - the continent. He goes to several places - Kenya and Nairobi, and this is 1982 - that he comes back and he decides to get on stage and talk about this experience and told the world what he'd decided regarding the use of the N-word. Let's listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

R PRYOR: And I was sitting in a hotel and a voice said to me - he said, look around. What do you see? And I said, I see all colors of people doing everything, you know? And the voice said, do you see any [expletive]?

(LAUGHTER)

R PRYOR: And I said, no. And he said, you know why? 'Cause there aren't any. And it hit me like a shot. And I was sitting there, I said, yeah, I've been here three weeks, I haven't even said it. I haven't even thought it. And it made me say, oh, my God, I've been wrong. I've been wrong. I got to regroup. I mean, I said, I ain't going to never call another Black man [expletive].

(APPLAUSE)

R PRYOR: You know, 'cause we never was no [expletive]. That's a word that's used to describe our own wretchedness and we perpetuate it now 'cause it's dead.

MOSLEY: That was Richard Pryor in 1982.

And, oh, gosh, Elizabeth, he'd built his career on that word, and here he is on this stage, saying, I have grown. I have learned something new. What did that moment mean for you?

E PRYOR: Oh, I remember being so proud of it. I felt like we were finally, like, aligned in this particular way. Because for me, as a biracial person, the N-word, I always knew it wasn't my word, certainly the way Black people used it with each other. And I longed for that. Not that it - the word is so great, but there's something happening when Black people are using it together that is great.

MOSLEY: Did you ever try? I did.

(LAUGHTER)

E PRYOR: I did. I did with my Black friends and they were like, do not do that anymore.

MOSLEY: (Laughter).

E PRYOR: You do not have the flow. You must stop.

MOSLEY: (Laughter).

E PRYOR: But I felt - yeah, I was proud of it. I felt proud of it.

MOSLEY: Did you guys ever talk about it?

E PRYOR: We didn't talk about my feelings about it, but my father did tell me.

MOSLEY: Right.

E PRYOR: He made a point of telling me. So in that way, I think it was important for him, but not necessarily about what it meant when he was on stage doing it because that felt like it was for all Black people to me.

MOSLEY: You know, he started to get sick around the time that hip-hop really was making its ascension, but, you know, it was being used. The word was becoming part of the vernacular. What do you think he would think about the next generation and the way that it was used? I mean, because he also didn't get a chance to see, say, someone like Kendrick Lamar win a Pulitzer Prize, which is a whole nother level of acknowledgment to the purpose of the use of the word beyond it just being a filler word, you know?

E PRYOR: Right. I mean, I'm not going to pretend to know what my father would think, but I will say that one of the things I admire about that moment when he disavows the word is he said, this is for me. I'm not telling you what to do. You know, this is for me. And I think there is a piece where he understood that the word had a function in Black culture. He does talk about, though, as an artist, like, losing control of what the word was doing. Like, he was trying to do something good by doing that, and then it did take on a life of its own.

MOSLEY: How has teaching this word changed for you now that you've gone through this process?

E PRYOR: Teaching the word is still incredibly difficult, I have to say. The conversations are always hard. But I feel like it's important because my students walk away knowing that this is not a conversation, like I said, about free speech. It's really about how we interact, how we want to bring as many people as we can to the table. And if we do that, that means that we're going to be thinking about who we're sitting at the table with and how things will impact them.

MOSLEY: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, thank you so much for this conversation, and thank you for this book.

E PRYOR: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

MOSLEY: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. Her new book is called "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me."

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, novelist Maggie O'Farrell. She wrote the book "Hamnet" and cowrote the screenplay for the film adaptation. She has a new book called "Land" about a father and son mapping 19th-century Ireland after the devastation of the great famine. I hope you can join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF JULIAN LARGE'S "NOCTURNE")

MOSLEY: To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram - @nprfreshair.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Sam Briger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.

(SOUNDBITE OF JULIAN LARGE'S "NOCTURNE")

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