Pushkin and the Queen of Spades: A Novel [Paperback]

Alice Randall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2005

Windsor Armstrong has a problem: her brilliant boy, Pushkin X, has become a football superstar and is planning to marry a Russian lap dancer. In Windsor's opinion, Pushkin is throwing away every good thing she has given him. When she was an unwed teen mother, Windsor attended Harvard, leaving her shady Detroit roots behind. She raised her son to be fiercely intelligent, well-spoken, and proud. Now he lives for pro football and a white woman of no account. Outraged by her son's decisions but devoted to loving him right, Windsor prepares to give up her last secret: the identity of Pushkin's father.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The unacknowledged boom in African-American fiction continues with Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, a second novel from Alice Randall, author of the nearly banned Gone with the Wind parody, The Wind Done Gone. Windsor Armstrong is a Harvard-educated professor of Russian literature whose son, Pushkin--named after the great Afro-Russian poet--defied all her hopes for him by becoming a star football player. Any other mother would be proud, Windsor reflects. But she had wanted her son to transcend the narrow roles allotted to him as a black man in America. She had wanted more for Pushkin--a place in black bohemia, a place carved out by the writings of Dubois and others. And now, he rejects her again by choosing a Russian lap dancer as his wife.

Windsor's musings--by turns angry, conflicted, wistful, and eccentric--are among the most penetrating comments on race and mother love in contemporary fiction. She recalls her Motown childhood; her cruel, self-hating mother's climb through white society in Washington, D.C.; and the refuge she found at Harvard, slowly uncovering the roots of her racism and her shock and sadness that Pushkin has fallen in love with a woman who does not look like her. And what does Pushkin want from Windsor? Only the truth about who his father is.

Though the novel is a little longer than it needs to be, readers who stay with Randall through the switchbacks and cul-de-sacs of her narrative will be rewarded with stylistic fireworks and an unparalleled examination of black racism. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Randall made a big splash (and got into legal hot water) with her first novel, The Wind Done Gone, a parody of Margaret Mitchell's classic Civil War saga. Her second is nearly as provocative, chronicling the tribulations of an African-American professor of Russian literature whose pro football player son plans to marry a Russian lap dancer. Windsor Armstrong was raped by her mother's white boss just before she went off to Harvard. She named the child she had Pushkin X, went on to get her degree and raised her son almost singlehandedly. Twenty-five years later, she is a tenured professor, trying to adjust to the idea that Pushkin might marry a white stripper called Tanya. Windsor retraces her difficult history to find out how things ended up this way, reminiscing about her Detroit childhood, her glamorous gangster father and her self-centered mother, who took her away from her father and moved to Washington, D.C., and a more privileged life. The novel begins brilliantly, in high satiric mode, with intelligent, unpredictable riffs on Motown vs. D.C., rape and racism, and the difficulty of being a good parent. Windsor's touchstone is the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, who was the great-grandson of an African slave presented to Peter the Great, and her interest in his complicated history is just one instance of Randall's clever, tables-turning musing on black identity. Windsor's self-questioning can be frustratingly circular, but even when her rhetoric runs away with her, her restless search for answers is stimulating. Fittingly, the novel ends with a rap version of Pushkin's unfinished novella "The Negro of Peter the Great," a conciliatory wedding gift Windsor has prepared for her son and his fiancee. With this heady tale, Randall proves decisively that she is more than a parodist.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (May 2, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618562052
• ISBN-13: 978-0618562053
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #764,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative, thought provoking and entertaining, June 17, 2004

By 

Maurice Williams "mauricewms" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pushkin and the Queen of Spades: A Novel (Hardcover)

Randall's latest novel, "Pushkin and the Queen of Spades" covers a lot of territory. On one level, it's the story of a mother's love for her son and her attempt to protect him from a truth that she feels may crush him. Windsor and Pushkin X - mother and son - are the focal characters in the novel. When Windsor learns of her son's plans to marry a Russian lap dancer, she is forced to reckon with aspects of her past that she has tried desperately to forget. Not only must she find a way to accept her future white daughter-in-law, but she must also find a way to tell her son who his father is. Within this story line, the author demonstrates the current and historical complexities of black/white racial relationships.

On another level, the story examines class and culture conflicts within the African American community. Windsor comes from a family with "all of the vices except those that are unforgivable and none of the virtues except those that are absolutely necessary". It is within this context that Randall explores the difficulties that Windsor has with integrating all facets of her life after a legitimate shift in class and cultural status. ". . . Negroes who survive to thrive exhibit highly original adaptations to life", Windsor tells Pushkin X; and she adapts by compartmentalizing her life in an effort to keep the criminal and abusive aspects of her family background from bleeding into the highly intellectual and academic life she now has as a Russian studies professor at Vanderbilt University. Is it possible to jettison what was then for what is now? Is it necessary? I found this aspect of the novel comparable in many ways to my life experience and the author captures the character's psychological conflicts with apt clarity and clinical insight.

Then there's the literary relationship between the text of Randall's novel and the work of Alexander Pushkin. Although I wasn't familiar with Pushkin's work I had heard of him at some point during my academic career. What I don't recall hearing is that he is of African descent. This bit of knowledge did for me on a small scale what it did for Windsor enormously - it sparked an interest to know more about the African-Russian. It's because of Randall's work that I've recently read Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades", that I've read a little biographical information about the author and his work, and that I will read "The Negro of Peter the Great." There is nothing more beautiful, more powerful, than a novel that entertains, uplifts, and educates; "Pushkin and the Queen of Spades" does all three.

And then there's the rhythm of the story, the beat. Poetic passages and skillfully crafted phrases reflect the author's command of language and knowledge of literary history. "Pushkin and the Queen of Spades" is a monumental accomplishment. Randall packs the story with African-American history and tradition as well as literary creativity and complexity. You'll have to put your thinking hat on for this one but its well worth the effort.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top Draft Pick of 2004, January 4, 2005

By 

Kim Anderson Ray "The Suburban Sista" (Aiken, SC, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pushkin and the Queen of Spades: A Novel (Hardcover)

In Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, Alice Randall mixes a spicy gumbo of Russian literature, Motown, and hip-hop that glides across the palate of the mind to rave culinary reviews. It's funky, hip, and sexy, yet sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and righteously poetic. When a Harvard-educated professor's football superstar son decides to marry a Russian lap dancer, her life becomes a retrospective of "where did I go wrong as a single black mother?" Windsor Armstrong thought she had raised her son, Pushkin X, to be a perfect reflection of herself: educated, erudite, and worldly, and sees his taste for the common as a direct rejection of everything she has ingrained in him, including her place in his life. Rather than retreat and wait for him to come to his senses, she writes a hip-hop elegy of epic proportions as a wedding gift in hopes of culling his forgiveness while desperately trying to respect his choices.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars That which is most vehemently denied is often most inescapably true., December 13, 2007

By 

mateo52 "invisible man" (State College, Pa.) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Pushkin and the Queen of Spades: A Novel (Paperback)

"...And my parents did not give me a Russian name, for, other than a few dedicated Communists in the thirties and forties, what black parents ever did?"

That comment, posed by a fictional character in another novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park,is answered here by Alice Randall in the persona of this story's most significant presence, Windsor Armstrong, a Harvard-educated professor of Russian Literature at Vanderbilt University. We meet Windsor as she is about to commence an epoch of self-reflection and introspection brought on by the impending marriage of her son Pushkin to a Russian- born, blond-haired stripper with, as the story unfolds, the ironic name of Tanya.

Over a plate of grilled cheese and French fries in a seedy country western bar, over the next 200 pages or so, the reader is a rapt observer to intellectual self-vivisection as the professor examines exactly why she has arrived at this point of estrangement from her son, brought on by her palpable disenchantment with her son's choice of spouse as well as prior decisions (college choice, career) that failed to correlate to her aspirations for him, never mind the fact he has far exceeded the dreams most parents would ever entertain for their children. Circumstances are further complicated by the secret of Pushkin's parentage as Windsor has historically deflected, or just ignored any and all entreaties from her son regarding the name of his birth father.

Randall has infused enough thematic discourses to support a Doctorate thesis in American studies however, at the core this is a parent's paean to a child-man, an independent thinking and acting adult who has absorbed all of the lessons and knowledge any parent would hope to pass down but one who, while respectful of his elder, will not be hamstrung by any implicit requirement to live his life in accordance with another's vision.

Pushkin and the Queen of Spades is a tour de force exhibiting Ms. Randall's inestimable talents. Whereas her previous novel,The Wind Done Gone: A Novel, brought to mind the prose and style of Zora Neale Hurston, in this work one feels the influences of Joyce, Morrison, and Giovanni. WDG posed the question, "where were the mulatto children of Tara?" "Pushkin..." asks the question, "What are the consequences of our inculcated values?" She demonstrates visceral aplomb in the style of the classicists, post- modernists, or rhythmic fluidity of the urban patois. Whilst the path of introspective reflection allows her to examine the psyche, cultural patterns and distinctiveness of Black Americans in a multiplicity of circumstance and to address the often conflicting objectives of inclusiveness and individuality, Ms. Randall unfolds a story that should foment personal assessment of how we interact with our children and what messages we send to them via our thoughts and actions, whether verbalized or implied.