Richard Pryor dedicated his 1995 autobiography, Pryor Convictions: And Other Life Sentences, “to my angels,” and it does not take long to understand why. A comic genius, a movie star, and a revolutionary stand-up, Pryor seemed to have the devil perpetually perched on his shoulder, whispering in his ear.

In this unflinchingly honest book, Pryor recounts his journey from abused child to multimillionaire drug-addict abuser. Along the way, he tells tales both heartbreaking and hilarious. From shooting rounds into the sky while high on coke with Freddie Prinze to getting weed for Jackie Gleason or sneaking drugs to prisoners in Arizona during the filming of Stir Crazy, Pryor lived hard, and made millions laugh even harder along the way.

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“My job, as I saw it, was to throw light where there had only been darkness,” he writes in Pryor Convictions. “What I’m saying might be profane. But it’s also profound.”

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The Minefield

“I was a skinny little black kid, with big eyes that took in the whole world and a wide, bright smile that begged for more attention than anybody had time to give,” Pryor writes of his brutal childhood in Peoria, Illinois. Raised in the brothels run by his mother and grandmother, he was exposed to violence and sexuality from a young age—including a fight between his parents that ended when his mother ripped open his father’s testicle. Then there was the family’s bar, the Famous Door, where Pryor saw patrons beaten and knifed. His neighborhood was not any safer: he was molested by an older man, and once found a dead baby in a shoe box.

However, there were good times as well. “The prostitutes sat in the big picture window and waved to customers,” Pryor writes of his childhood home. “All sorts. Whites and blacks. Businessmen. Politicians. Junkies. I spent a lot of time sitting with them, yacking, laughing, and bullshitting.”

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He also liked to watch the women at work. “I spied through the keyholes, putting my eye to the little opening every chance I got. I bumped my head a lot, but I also got an education you couldn’t get in school,” he writes. Once, to get a good look, he crawled into a vent and pushed out the screen to poke his head in the room, unbeknownst to the sex worker and her john in the bed below.

At the age of five, his mischievous spirit found its outlet in comedy, when he discovered that he had the ability to make even his hard-bitten family laugh:

Cosby’s Copycat

After a stint in the Army in Germany, which ended when Pryor stabbed a racist white man during a fight, he turned to comedy. With his overwhelming talent and charisma, he slowly climbed the ranks, modeling himself after the biggest Black comedian there was at the time: the family-friendly, safe Bill Cosby.

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