Something We Said

“Pryor pens an unflinching exploration of the use of the n-word in America and in her own life as the biracial daughter of a white, Jewish single mother and Black comedian Richard Pryor… Pryor’s engaging and honest debut is a welcome addition to library shelves.”—Library Journal

“Pryor wrestles in this moving blend of memoir and cultural history… a one-of-a-kind reckoning only a Pryor could provide.”—Publishers Weekly

“A moving reflection on family, belonging, and language’s power to wound and heal.”—Kirkus

“In this personal and linguistic history, Pryor traces her complicated relationship with her father, the celebrated comedian Richard Pryor, and with the racial slur that played a central role in his career.”—New York Times Book Review


“In Something We Said, Liz Pryor does what I assumed was the impossible, and that’s conjure distinct and unexplored pathways to explore a word that’s both my favorite and America’s least and most honest, through a dexterous and deeply vulnerable symphony of memoir, critique, and celebrity micro biography of said word’s most famous user.”—Damon Young, New York Times Bestselling Author of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays

“Half memoir and half racial history, Elizabeth Pryor explores how the n-word shaped both the public and private worlds of her father, Richard Pryor, and how it defined her own sense of identity as his biracial daughter… . Moving, courageous, and intellectually rich, this is a work that reminds us we are far from finished reckoning with the word that has both haunted and defined American life.”—Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop

“Pryor weaves hard history and memoir to reveal stories that are complicated and intimate. Tackling the intersections of race, fatherhood, and the most taboo word in the English language, the result is honest, vulnerable, and beautiful. History, much like her father, is hard, hilarious, and messy. I couldn’t put this book down, and when I did, it still stayed with me.”—Kellie Carter Jackson, author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance

“Brave, imaginative, and revealing, Something We Said combines the beautiful prose of an expert memoirist with a scholarly treatise on racial identity in America…. A master class on African American history.” —Erica Armstrong Dunbar, author of Never Caught

“Only the daughter of Richard Pryor could handle this spectacular story with such literary style, grace, and humor.” —Emily Bernard, winner of the Los Angeles Times Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose

“For the daughter of Richard Pryor to write a candid book about her father—and the journey that led her to teach a course on the n-word—is, on its face, intriguing enough. But this author gives us more: a coming-of-age story so brave, so intimate, so full of love’s humor and heartbreak that it stirs the soul.” —Paula J. Giddings, author of Ida: A Sword Among Lions

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is a professor of history at Smith College where she teaches courses on race, slavery, and her father, comedic legend Richard Pryor. She is the award-winning author of the article “The Etymology of [N-Word]: Resistance, Language, and the Politics of Freedom in the Antebellum North” and the 2016 book Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship Before the Civil War. Her viral TED talk on why it’s hard to talk about the n-word has been viewed more than two million times.

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