Richard Pryor’s Daughter Elizabeth Recalls Moment Her White Mother Called Her the N-Word During Heated Argument (Exclusive)
Richard Pryor’s Daughter Elizabeth Recalls Moment Her White Mother Called Her the N-Word During Heated Argument (Exclusive)
Angela AndaloroWed, July 1, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC
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Richard Pyror, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor and mom Maxine SilvermanCredit: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor/Instagram -
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is the third eldest of late comedian Richard Pryor's seven children
The Smith College history professor, 59, opens up about navigating race with the white, Jewish side of her family in her new memoir
Stordeur Pryor talks racial dynamics and what it was like growing up in her unique family in Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me
Richard Pryor's daughter has learned a lot about race in her experience as a biracial woman.
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, the third eldest of the late comedian's children, is today a history professor who delves into race in her work. She combines that work with her personal story in her new book, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me.
Speaking with PEOPLE about the recently released memoir, Stordeur Pryor touches on one of the book's most poignant moments, where a heated argument between herself and mom Maxine Silverman culminated in allegedly using a racial slur against her 12-year-old daughter.
Stordeur Pryor notes that while it was a jarring incident and did cause a shift in the relationship, she always felt loved by her mom.
“Even with what my mom said, with the ways my mom mishandled — that's the light way of saying it — the racial dynamic in our relationship, she loved me. I've always known that my family has, but to be entirely honest, it's still not a conversation that I've been able to sink into and have with them perhaps on the level that I would like to,” she candidly shared.
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Richard Pryor and ElizabethCredit: Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor/Instagram
The way she wishes to discuss it is “more [with] curiosity like, ‘Did you know that I was Black?' or Were you told to behave in a particular way around it?' to my cousins mostly. Those kinds of questions, because they're the ones who are living now.”
Stordeur Pryor referenced W.E.B. Du Bois' sociological theory of double consciousness, where a Black person feels like they have two separate identities while navigating race in society.
“It's funny, W. E. B. Du Bois talks about the double consciousness and I think there's even a double consciousness within my family, where they're 100% my family — I have memories of them from a child, from my 20s, from my 30s, at my wedding, etc. — and then there's this whole other element that I have one eye and ear open to all the time, a caution, that are operating in tandem with each other,” she shared.
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“So yeah, I haven't really processed the book with them, but I have processed it a lot with my girlfriends from high school. It's been pretty amazing because they had no idea that I was going through what I was going through and are now trying to work through what about themselves allowed them to not see that truth. And we've had some really beautiful, beautiful conversations, hard ones, but really beautiful.”
"Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me" by Elizabeth Stordeur PryorCredit: Simon & Schuster
Where Stordeur Pryor proudly credits her mom is for documenting her father's career and major accomplishments, as well as his moments as a father, for her daughter as she grew up.
“It was always annoying to me as a kid, she just had that scissors out and clipping away and putting, but not organized, throwing them in a box, throwing them in envelopes and manila folders. It's not a scrapbook. The newspapers are still in their original form and everything, but that she knew that she had the foresight to collect all of this,” she recalls.
“A lot of things, I didn't even have to go to the library to do the research. I could just open up the Jet magazines in my arsenal and read through them. His Christmas cards, the notes he sent me, there's a beautiful note that I talk about in the book that he wrote me a little poem, and it's so sweet. She saved all that. I don't know how she knew to do that, but she did.”
In the book, Stordeur Pryor describes a suitcase, the first bit of her father's history she ever got access to, that was filled with magazine clippings, notes and more.
“That would've been on a garage sale table, if it were me. It would've been years later that I was like, "Why did I sell that briefcase?" Because sentimental isn't my thing. And I don't know if it was hers either, but she was an archivist in her heart,” she laughs.
“She saved it like that in cardboard boxes and it lasted and yeah, it is really special. There were things of his that I also saved too because of it. I think some that I didn't that I'm hammering myself about, but some that I did.”
Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Meis now available, wherever books are sold.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
