Best Of: Novelist Maggie O’Farrell / A personal history of the N-Word
6/6/202648 min
Maggie O’Farrell wrote the novel ‘Hamnet’ and co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation. She has a new book called ‘Land,’ about a father and son mapping 19th-century Ireland after the devastation of the Great Famine.
Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the latest by classics scholar Mary Beard.
Also, we hear from historian Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. She has spent much of her career tracing the N-word through slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and hip hop. For a long time she kept it a secret that her father was Richard Pryor, the man who put the word at the center of American comedy. "I was a scholar of the N-word — and so, obviously, is he." Her new book is ‘Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me.’
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Sam Briger· Host0:14
[soft music] From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Briger. Today, novelist Maggie O'Farrell. She wrote the book Hamnet and co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation. She has a new book called Land about a father and son mapping 19th century Ireland after the devastation of the Great Famine. Also, we'll hear from historian Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. She spent her career tracing the racial slur, the N-word, through slavery, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and hip-hop. But what she didn't tell her students, even some of her colleagues, was that her father was the comedian who put that word at the center of American comedy, Richard Pryor.
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor· Guest0:55
I mean, I was a scholar of the N-word, and so obviously is he.
Sam Briger· Host1:00
Her new book is Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, and Me. And book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the latest by classic scholar Mary Beard. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
Speaker 01:14
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