I Named My Dog Pushkin (And Other Immigrant Tales)
Notes from a Soviet Girl on Becoming an American Woman
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Narrated by:
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Laurel Lefkow
About this listen
Buy a pair of Levi's, lose the Russian accent, and turn yourself into an American. Really, how difficult could it be?
Fake an exit visa, fool the Soviet authorities, pack enough sausage to last through immigration, buy a one-way Aeroflot ticket, and the rest will sort itself out. That was the gist of every Soviet-Jewish immigrant’s plan in the 1980s, Margarita’s included. Despite her father's protestations that they'd get caught and thrown into a gulag, she convinced her family to follow that plan.
When they arrived in the US, Margarita had a clearly defined objective - become fully American as soon as possible and leave her Soviet past behind. But she soon learned that finding her new voice was harder than escaping the Soviet secret police.
She finds herself changing her name to fit in, disappointing her parents who expect her to become a doctor, a lawyer, an investment banker, and a classical pianist - all at the same time, learning to date without hang-ups (there is no sex in the Soviet Union), parenting her own daughter ‘while too Russian’, and not being able to let go of old habits (never, ever throw anything away because you might use it again). Most importantly, she finds that no matter how hard you try not to become your parents, you end up just like them anyway.
Witty, sharp, and unflinching, I Named My Dog Pushkin will have fans of Samantha Irby and Jenny Lawson howling with laughter at Margarita’s catastrophes, her victories, and her near misses as she learns to grow as both a woman and an immigrant in a world that often doesn’t appreciate either.
©2021 Margarita Gokun Silver (P)2021 Thread, an imprint of Storyfire Ltd.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
At 13, bright-eyed straight-A student Sara Saedi uncovered a terrible family secret: She was breaking the law simply by living in the United States. Only two years old when her parents fled Iran, she didn't learn of her undocumented status until her older sister wanted to apply for an after-school job but couldn't because she didn't have a Social Security number. Fear of deportation kept Sara up at night, but it didn't keep her from being a teenager.
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Corny Cheesy
- By Mina00 on 09-06-18
By: Sara Saedi
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The Wrong End of the Table
- A Mostly Comic Memoir of a Muslim Arab American Woman Just Trying to Fit In
- By: Ayser Salman, Reza Aslan - foreword
- Narrated by: Ayser Salman, Assaf Cohen
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Part memoir and part how-not-to guide, The Wrong End of the Table is everything you wanted to know about Arabs but were afraid to ask, with chapters such as “Tattoos and Other National Security Risks,” “You Can’t Blame Everything on Your Period; Sometimes You’re Going to Be a Crazy Bitch: and Other Advice from Mom,” and even an open letter to Trump. This is the story of every American outsider on a path to find themselves in a country of beautiful diversity.
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Not what I was looking for
- By Amazon Customer on 09-01-22
By: Ayser Salman, and others
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Under Red Skies
- Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China
- By: Karoline Kan
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.
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An intimate view of real life in China
- By Lonnie G. Hardy, Jr. on 08-15-19
By: Karoline Kan
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The Mathematician's Shiva
- By: Stuart Rojstaczer
- Narrated by: Angela Brazil, Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When the greatest female mathematician in history passes away, her son, Alexander "Sasha" Karnokovitch, just wants to mourn his mother in peace. But rumor has it the notoriously eccentric Polish émigré has solved one of the most difficult problems in all of mathematics and has spitefully taken the solution to her grave. A ragtag group of mathematicians from around the world descends upon Rachela's shiva, determined to find the proof or solve it for themselves - even if it means prying up the floorboards for notes.
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Great read
- By Lee Crowe on 07-27-15
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The Inheritance
- A Novel
- By: JoAnn Ross
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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When conflict photographer Jackson Swann dies, he leaves behind a conflict of his own making when his three daughters, each born to a different mother, discover that they’re now responsible for the family’s Oregon vineyard - and for a family they didn’t ask for.
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Great story a few little quirks
- By Dawn Starostka on 09-15-21
By: JoAnn Ross
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Mother Daughter Me
- A Memoir
- By: Katie Hafner
- Narrated by: Katie Hafner
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The complex, deeply binding relationship between mothers and daughters is brought vividly to life in Katie Hafner's remarkable memoir, an exploration of the year she and her mother, Helen, spent working through, and triumphing over, a lifetime of unresolved emotions. Dreaming of a "year in Provence" with her mother, Katie urges Helen to move to San Francisco to live with her and Zoe, Katie's teenage daughter. Katie and Zoe had become a mother-daughter team, strong enough, Katie thought, to absorb the arrival of a 77-year-old woman set in her ways....
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Listen and be swept away!
- By Barbara Quick on 06-02-22
By: Katie Hafner
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After I'm Gone
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Linda Emond
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Dead is dead. Missing is gone. When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette "Bambi" Gottschalk at a Valentine's Day dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps. Thanks to his lucrative - if not all legal - businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury. But on the Fourth of July in 1976, Bambi's comfortable world implodes when Felix, facing prison, vanishes. Though Bambi has no idea where her husband - or his money - might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie.
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Cannot rate this highly enough!
- By C. Vincent on 03-05-14
By: Laura Lippman
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Something She's Not Telling Us
- A Novel
- By: Darcey Bell
- Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny, Carly Robins, Pete Simonelli, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Charlotte has everything in life that she ever could have hoped for: a doting, artistic husband, a small-but-thriving flower shop, and her sweet, smart five-year-old daughter, Daisy. Her relationship with her mother might be strained, but the distance between them helps. And her younger brother Rocco may have horrible taste in women, but when he introduces his new girlfriend to Charlotte and her family, they are cautiously optimistic that she could be The One. Daisy seems to love Ruth, and she can’t be any worse than the klepto Rocco brought home the last time.
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Should be "Something Almost Happened"
- By Kimberly Wasilewski on 05-03-20
By: Darcey Bell
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Schadenfreude, a Love Story
- Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For
- By: Rebecca Schuman
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Schadenfreude is the story of a teenage Jewish intellectual who falls in love - in love with a boy (who breaks her heart), a language (that's nearly impossible to master), a culture (that's nihilistic but punctual), and a landscape (that's breathtaking when there's not a wall in the way). Rebecca is an everyday, misunderstood '90s teenager with a passion for Pearl Jam and Ethan Hawke circa Reality Bites until two men walk into her high school civics class: Dylan Gellner and Franz Kafka, hitching a ride in Dylan's backpack.
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A humorous, delectable read
- By Amazon Customer on 07-13-17
By: Rebecca Schuman
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Normal Gets You Nowhere
- By: Kelly Cutrone
- Narrated by: Kelly Cutrone
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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With Normal Gets You Nowhere, Kelly Cutrone invites us to get our freak on. History is full of successful, world-changing people who did not fit in. Think Nelson Mandela, Joan of Arc, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, John Lennon, and Rosa Parks. Instead of changing themselves to accommodate the status quo or what others thought they should be, these people hung a light on their differences - and changed humanity in the process. “I know you don’t feel normal, so why are you trying to act it and prove to everyone you are?” Cutrone says.
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For open minds and hearts.
- By Kelly on 01-06-12
By: Kelly Cutrone
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The Shop on Blossom Street
- By: Debbie Macomber
- Narrated by: Linda Emond
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Abridged
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There's a little shop on Blossom Street in Seattle called A Good Yarn. You go there to buy knitting supplies and patterns, and now it's offering a knitting class. The first lesson: how to knit a baby blanket.
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Shop on Blossom Street
- By Christine on 07-30-05
By: Debbie Macomber
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Confucius Never Said
- By: Helen Raleigh
- Narrated by: Helen Raleigh
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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This book is a four-generation family journey from repression and poverty in China to freedom and prosperity in the United States. Their lives overlap with many significant historical events taking....
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Wake up America
- By K and J on 12-14-19
By: Helen Raleigh
What listeners say about I Named My Dog Pushkin (And Other Immigrant Tales)
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amory Blaine
- 10-06-21
Totally Delightful!
Collections of funny essays are usually a mixed bag. Most of the essays are amusing, a few are hilarious, and several seem to only be there to make the manuscript book length. But I like humor writing and I'm an optimist, so I'll often try collections by unfamiliar authors, especially if I stand to learn something new. I read a review of this book on the NPR website and bought it on a whim. I'm so glad I did!
This collection is funny throughout! I'm not saying I loved every essay equally, but I've already listened to the whole book twice. Gokun Silver's prose is sharp and effervescent, managing to touch on history and important issues in between jokes. There's stuff about antisemitism in the USSR, the culture shock of moving from a communist nation to a capitalist one, and heaps about Russian culture. The author also makes the wise decision to tell her story thematically, rather than chronologically. Though the book is, at heart, a memoir, Gokun Silver's method allows her to serve up the funniest parts of her experience without the mountain of exposition that a linear approach would entail.
And Laurel Lefkow is a great narrator! There aren't a lot of different voices for her to master here, but, crucially, the producers chose a narrator who can speak Russian! I don't speak Russian, but, when Lefkow reads the Russian phrases that appear throughout the book, I believe that she is pronouncing them correctly. (This seems like a no-brainer, but any frequent audiobook listener will tell you that narrators often butcher words in other languages, even if those words are central to the story.) Also—for any readers considering this book based on the title—Pushkin the dog is entirely incidental and appears for maybe three minutes toward the beginning. So, if you're a dog-lover looking for a heartwarming story of how a puppy helped a young émigré adjust to a new life in America—this is not that book.
Finally, I loved how this collection coheres in a way that many funny collections don't. The theme, Gokun Silver's experiences as an expatriate, makes the book all the more satisfying. In short, this collection is funny, smart, and observant. It's worth your time.
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- Namastellen
- 04-07-22
smug about being funny, but actually not funny
There is a story here that the author totally steps on & ignores. Her early Soviet life/immigration/early American life was interesting and had some gentle humor that arose organically. However, she was so repetitive & bludgeoning about how clever she was, it ruined her actual story. Once she was grown & married, the book was just terrible; it was all dated, warmed over Erma Bombeck. Who really needs that?. Those endless lists were tedious & not funny.
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- Joe F.
- 01-31-22
What Trump has to do with this?
One hour left in this book and I can’t take it anymore. As an immigrant, i know how hard it is to start your life in a new country, but this book is just terrible and nothing more then waste of time.
She starts of by openly not liking her parents just because they have different views. Very bad taste and teenager like. She trashes Russian literature, probably should actually read it and develop deeper thoughts and hold the story line better than that. Throughout the book she cares about Levi’s jeans and her looks on them. LOL. Russian culture is all about showing out and pretending that you don’t belong there, that makes her the most Russian. She sounds very annoying, ungrateful and spoiled b….
But the biggest turn off was when she starts taking about Trump. Out of nowhere for no good reason. Still didn’t understand why?
Overall - bad writing, boring story, cringy.
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