PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewOn its surface, Something We Said is a family memoir written by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, the daughter of the comedian Richard Pryor. But it is probably better described as a book about who can and can’t say the n-word ... Trim and at times courageous ... What struck me as the most telling part of Something We Said was not an exchange that Pryor had with her father or her peers, but one she had with her mother. During an argument, her mother called her the n-word, a moment that Pryor writes would \'stay with me forever.\' And yet, she doesn’t dwell on it in the book ... Failing to closely examine the word being wielded like a dagger by one’s own white mother is a shame and a disappointment. Perhaps Pryor was looking in all the wrong places on her quest to self-discovery and the ultimate understanding of all things n-word.
