Jokes My Father Never Taught Me: Life, Love, and Loss with Richard Pryor - Hardcover

9780061195426: Jokes My Father Never Taught Me: Life, Love, and Loss with Richard Pryor
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A candid memoir by the daughter of the pioneering African-American comedian discusses her efforts to embrace the divergent cultures of both of her parents, her painful exposure to drugs and sex throughout her earliest years, and her witness to Pryor's deterioration through multiple sclerosis. 125,000 first printing.

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Synopsis:
This is a loving yet brutally honest memoir by the daughter of comedy legend Richard Pryor. Rain Pryor was born in the idealistic, free-love 1960s. Her mother was a Jewish go-go dancer who wanted a "tribe of rainbow children," and her father was Richard Pryor, perhaps the most compelling and brilliant comedian of his era. In this intimate, harrowing, and often hilarious memoir, Rain depicts a disturbing childhood in the shadow of her celebrated father. Rain's memoir is a complicated all-American tale. Her home life was infused with drugs and sex; at age eight she sat down to Thanksgiving dinner with the words, "Daddy, the whores need to be paid." "Jokes My Father Never Taught Me" is both lovingly told and painfully frank: the story of a girl who grew up adoring her father even as she feared him - and feared for him, as his drug problems grew worse. In 1980, he was nearly killed in a "revolutionary suicide attempt. And in his later years, as he succumbed to multiple sclerosis, Rain saw her father reduced to watching the Comedy Channel for hours on end.

Rain Pryor's book gives an unprecedented look at the life of a legend of comedy, told by a daughter who both understood the genius and knew the man.
About the Author:

Rain Pryor was a regular on the hit ABC series Head of the Class, starred in the Showtime series Rude Awakening, and created an award-winning one-woman show based on her life, Fried Chicken and Latkas. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

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  • PublisherReganBooks,U.S.
  • Publication date2006
  • ISBN 10 0061195421
  • ISBN 13 9780061195426
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages224
  • Rating

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9780061350979: Jokes My Father Never Taught ME: Life, Love, and Loss with Richard Pryor

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ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780061350979
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2007
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. " The loving yet brutally honest memoir of the daughter of comedy legend Richard Pryor. Rain Pryor was born in the idealistic, free-love 1960s. Her mother was a Jewish go-go dancer who wanted a tribe of rainbow children, and her father was Richard Pryor, perhaps the most compelling and brilliant comedian of his era. In this intimate, harrowing, and often hilarious memoir, Rain talks about her divided heritage, and about the forces that shaped her wildly schizophrenic childhood. In her father's house, she bonded with Richard's grandmother, Mamma, a one-time whorehouse madam who never tired of reminding Rain that she was black. In her mother's house, and in the home of her Jewish grandparents, Rain was a "mocha-colored Jewish princess," learning how to cook everything from kugel to beef brisket. It seemed as if Rain was blessed with the best of both worlds, but it didn't quite work out that way. Life at Mom's was unstable in the extreme, while at Richard's place Rain was exposed to sex and drugs before she had even learned to read. "Daddy," she told her father one day, sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner at the advanced age of eight, "the whores need to be paid."Jokes My Father Never Taught Me is both lovingly told and painfully frank: the story of a girl who grew up adoring her father even as she feared himand feared for himas his drug problems grew worse. In 1980 Pryor tried to kill himself by setting himself on fire, then joked that it had been an accident: "No one ever told me you couldn't mix cookies with two types of milk!" In his later years, Pryor succumbed to multiple sclerosis, and Rain watched in tears as her father became a shell of his former self. Once, in an unusually introspective mood, Pryor asked his daughter, "Why do you love me, Rainy, when I can be so mean?" Jokes My Father Never Taught Me answers that poignant question and many more. It is an unprecedented look at the life of a legend of comedy, told by a daughter who both understood the genius and knew the tortured man within.". Seller Inventory # 010653

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