Richard Pryor’s Daughter Reveals Her White Mother Used a Racial Slur Against Her at 12

Late comedy legend Richard Pryor‘s daughter, Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, has carried both love and heartache side by side for as long as she can remember, and now she’s bravely sharing her story with the world.

The third-oldest among the late actor’s seven children is sharing intimate details from her childhood in the memoir Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me.

In an interview with People on Wednesday, July 1, the Smith College professor, 59, opened up about her turbulent childhood. She recalled one painful incident in particular.

When she was 12, a fight with her mother, Maxine Silverman, escalated to the point where Silverman allegedly used a racial slur against her.

Even though the painful episode scarred her, Elizabeth said she never once doubted her mother’s love.

“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 shared.

Through her memoir, she is now advocating for is a gentler, more open dialogue around race. The historian told People she now wants to ask, “‘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.”

Elizabeth expressed gratitude to her mom for quietly building a wholesome archive of her dad’s life when she was a kid.

“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,”  told the outlet.

Richard died in December 2005 of cardiac arrest after spending nearly 20 years battling the degenerative effects of multiple sclerosis, CNN reported at the time.

The late comedian is still regarded by many as one of the most influential comedians ever to take the stage. Over the course of his career, he won five Grammys for his comedy albums and appeared in films such as Harlem Nights and Brewster’s Millions. He was also once the highest-paid Black actor in Hollywood, earning $4 million for Superman III, as per NPR.