With the release of her new memoir, Richard Pryor’s daughter Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor opened up about a childhood wound that she has carried for decades.
In Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me, Stordeur Pryor, 59, revisited an argument with her white mother Maxine Silverman, who allegedly called her a racial slur when she was 12 years old.
The comedian’s daughter recalled Barbara Walters saying the N-word while interviewing her father in 1979 about his use of the word in his standup routine. While Pryor joked that it was not Walters’ first time saying the racial slur, Stordeur Pryor was left stunned by what she witnessed, standing out of the camera’s view.
According to CNN, Stordeur Pryor remembered being instructed by her father to never let a white person say the N-word.
“I don’t know if there’s anyone … appearing Whiter than Barbara Walters in that moment with her bouffant hairstyle hair, pink lips, pink clothes and daintiness,” she told CNN. “And she’s here with my father using the N-word and he calls her out for it. I wasn’t sure what’s going to happen.”
Looking back at the incident with her mother, Stordeur Pryor, who is now a professor of history at Smith College, told People that she does not want to reduce her mother to that single moment.
“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,” she said. “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.”
In an interview with NPR's Fresh Air, Stordeur Pryor said she has never received an apology from her mother, even though the opportunity presented itself a number of times. “My mother never apologized for that," she said. "I brought it up — I gave her plenty of chances. I brought it up a lot."
As for her relationship with her father, Stordeur Pryor admitted that brought up its own set of challenges.
"He struggled to show up as a parent," she told CNN, "And I never felt funny enough, or creative enough, or Black enough to be his daughter."
Something We Said is now available.
