Jokes My Father Never Taught Me (2006)

Rain Pryor pulls no punches in her memoir about life as the ''Black Jewish American Princess'' offspring of the late comedian Richard Pryor. Using the same profanity-laced wit her father perfected, she unspools darkly comic stories about a childhood filled with the elder Pryor's prostitutes, drug use, and physical abuse, but never devolves into self-pity or bitterness: ''I wondered why I wasn't angrier with him. But I never felt anger. The motherf---er had a hold on me, and I couldn't help but love him.'' By the end, though, Richard Pryor remains as much a mystery to readers as he does to his daughter.