Dr. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor will return to Peoria on Aug. 11 for a discussion and book signing at the Peoria Riverfront Museum, the first time she has been back since 1978. The event is part of the Museum Conversations series and brings her book, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me, to a Peoria, IL weather day that is really about memory, language and family history.
Aug. 11 at 6 p.m.
The museum has set the appearance for 6 p.m., giving readers a clear time for the discussion and signing. Dr. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is the daughter of Richard Pryor, and the program centers on the legacy the museum is continuing to honor through the series.
Everley Davis, the museum’s director of community engagement and assistant curator, said the effort has been years in the making. “This is huge, I feel like it's been a long time coming as a Peoria native myself, for the city to really embrace Richard Pryor's life.”
Everley Davis on Richard Pryor
Davis said the museum is not presenting Richard Pryor as a simple story. “Yes, he had a complicated life. There's a drug addiction and all kinds of things. But nobody's perfect.” That framing carries into the Aug. 11 program, where the book signing is paired with a discussion rather than a standard appearance.
She also pointed to the reason the author’s work fits the series. “Her being a professor of African American History at Smith College and having the scholarship of the history of the N-word.” Davis said Pryor’s background also includes “this complicated relationship of being raised as Jewish and Black.”
Something We Said in Peoria
Davis connected the book to Richard Pryor’s comedy and the language his work raised. “And her father being Richard Pryor and using the N-word and making that big in his comedy,” she said. “She's really mining the ideas and navigating that space of what does this word mean, how do we use it and how does it translate into our larger social conversation.”
For readers in Peoria, the practical point is simple: the appearance is scheduled, it is tied to the museum’s ongoing series, and it marks Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor’s first visit to the city in 1978. The event puts her back in front of a local audience that has a direct connection to the family story she is bringing to the museum.
