NEWARK — Historian Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor has published a new book titled 'Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me,' examining her complex relationship with the N-word as the biracial daughter of comedian Richard Pryor. The work draws on her academic research into the term’s history across slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and hip-hop, as well as her personal experiences navigating race and identity.

Stordeur Pryor describes her relationship to the N-word as "super complicated" due to being the child of a white mother and a Black father. For much of her teaching career, she did not reveal to audiences that her father was Richard Pryor while presenting her research on the word. She recalled teaching a college class in which a white student used the N-word while quoting the film 'Blazing Saddles,' which her father co-wrote. "I was just kind of like a deer in the headlights. I was really worried about the Black students. Something I had never considered when I thought about teaching is what happens when the racism that we study and we teach comes in? How do I work through that in the moment?" she said.

In the book, Stordeur Pryor reflects on her father’s evolving stance on the word. Late in his career, after spending time in Kenya, Richard Pryor vowed never to use the N-word again. His daughter noted that when he disavowed it, he emphasized, "This is for me. I'm not telling you what to do." She explained that he recognized the word’s role in Black culture but also felt that, as an artist, he had lost control over what it was doing.

Stordeur Pryor recounted that in one of their first meaningful conversations as a young girl, her father told her, "Don't let nobody ever call you that," before using the N-word himself. She said her father employed the term in a subversive way, as part of a Black tradition of protest, using it as "a slap in the face to white racism."

Despite the difficulty of teaching about the word, Stordeur Pryor believes the conversations are necessary. "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 about free speech. It's really about how we interact, how we want to bring as many people as we can to the table," she said.