Episode
Best Of: Novelist Maggie O’Farrell / A personal history of the N-Word
- Podcast
- Fresh Air
- Published
- Jun 6, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2890
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Summary
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.’ See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy