Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor does through academia and as a nonfiction author what her father, Richard Pryor, did through comedy. During his heyday in the 1970s and ’80s, Pryor was a trailblazing stand-up comic, actor, and screenwriter who boldly pioneered new ways to discuss and challenge race onstage and on-screen. Pryor was the comedic dimension of Black Power, who often costarred in comedies with Gene Wilder and as a working-class hero in Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar (1978).

In what could be called his “Pryor offense,” Richard’s routines frequently invoked the N-word until a dramatic event led him to repudiate using it. Now, in Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me, his daughter Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor deconstructs the history and etymology of that infamous word, interweaving it with a personal memoir of being raised by a Hollywood legend, while also telling the story of her troubled father who parlayed tales about growing up in a brothel into topical humor that impacted the national discourse on racial and gender dynamics.

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, who is a professor of history at Smith College, was interviewed via phone in Oakland.