Pursuing Alexander Pushkin is the story of a scholar/poet whose life and work is shaped significantly by the Russian writer, Alexander Pushkin. Robert Coles’s memoir begins with his student years at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where he discovered Pushkin during the Black Arts Movement in the early 1970s. Coles describes how Pushkin’s African race pride and literary achievements influenced his own work and gave him much-needed inspiration to keep writing. Thereafter, Coles details how Pushkin, despite his Russian background, shares an existential consciousness with African American people. Eventually this led Coles to travel to Russia, numerous times, to trace this connection further. In other words, Pushkin’s experience of otherness and racial difference in Russian high society led him to better understand the suffering of Russian people, mostly serfs, and other oppressed groups. Pushkin’s universalism, his internationally recognized genius, grew from having both an African and Russian heritage.

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”In a captivating journey of self-discovery, Coles bridges African American and Russian heritage through the life and works of his literary hero, Alexander Pushkin. With profound dedication, Coles delves into Pushkin’s legacy, uncovering shared struggles and universal connections across continents and time.”

--Tammy Letherer, author of The Buddha at My Table

About the Author

Robert Coles obtained his PhD in American Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979. He has taught African American Literature at various colleges and universities in the US. His Pushkin scholarly work began at Hampshire College, Massachusetts, in the early 1990s and continued until 2009 when he retired to focus on additional Pushkin ventures. Coles is also a poet and has published over one hundred poems in periodicals, magazines, and anthologies.

Category: Biography, Memoir, Literary Criticism/AFRICAN AMERICAN                                                               

World Rights

Trim:  5.5x8.5”

Page count:  136 

Publication Date: 2025