Readers and writers: Former St. Paulite’s debut novel is now a Penguin Classic
Just in time for Black History Month comes news that a 30th anniversary edition of David Haynes’ debut novel, “Right By My Side,” will go on sale Tuesday as a Penguin Classic. This is an honor for Haynes, a former St. Paul middle-school teacher and professor emeritus of English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Not many living authors are included in the Classics series and Haynes now joins the ranks of writes such as Alice Hoffman and Amy Tan.
“It’s very rare for a book to get a second life so I am excited to bring this one to a new generation,” Haynes said in a phone conversation from his home in St. Louis, sounding as genial as when he did a Pioneer Press interview in 1993. “This novel has been out of print for probably 15 years. I have a few copies but it’s hard to find. I talked to a Minneapolis teacher who said his copy was falling apart.”
Haynes admits “it’s just beginning to sink in” that he’s being published in the Classics series, which all have the same color bindings. “I was so familiar with those orange spines in libraries and classrooms. When my box of books comes that’s the main thing I’m going to look at — that spine — and realize that’s me now.”
Haynes,67, wrote “Right By My Side” when he was about 30, living on West Seventh Street in St. Paul. He loved teaching sixth and seventh graders at various schools — Longfellow, Galtier, Como and Saturn, where he served on the leadership team of the experimental Saturn School of Tomorrow. But he’d always wanted to be a writer and was ready to give it a try. He got a boost when his short story “Taking Miss Kezee to the Polls” won the first annual fiction contest sponsored by City Pages, an alternative newspaper. His years in the classroom gave him fodder for five middle-grade books in the West Seventh Street series.
“Right By My Side,” set in the 1980s, is an often-humorous coming-of-a-age story about 15-year-old African-American Marshall Field Finney (named for the famous department store) who lives in a housing development outside of St. Louis and attends a mostly white St. Louis high school. His mother has run off, leaving him with his hard-drinking father who manages the local landfill. Marshall doesn’t know where his life is going until he discovers storytelling as a way to ease his teen anger and family tensions. Then, as Marshall struggles to make sense of his life, he gets letters from his mother reminding him how tightly they are linked. The young man’s friends, one white and one Black, are his only allies as they navigate school and family life together.
“Marshall is a nice combination of students I knew, kids I grew up with, and me,” Haynes says with amusement. “There’s lots of me in Marshall.”
But in the late 1980s, New York publishers didn’t want fiction about middle-class black kids and their families. Hayne’s manuscript was rejected over and over because, he says, it didn’t include drugs or sex. These publishers, he believes, thought readers wanted a received story validating their perceptions of young Black men, “but that wasn’t my book.”
“Right By My Side” finally found a home at Minneapolis-based New River Press, founded by the late C.W. “Bill” Truesdale, after the manuscript won the New Rivers Minnesota Voices Project. The book drew critical praise as soon as it was published and went through three printings, a coup for a small literary press. The American Library Association called it one of the best books of 1994, and two years later Haynes was named one of the 20 best young writers in America by Granta magazine.
Penguin singled out “Right By My Side” for a special edition because the publisher considers it an overlooked classic in our literary canon that features Black middle-class life in the American Midwest in the 1980s.
“With 2023 marking the 30th anniversary it’s time for Marshall Field Finney to be introduced to modern readers and students to read alongside other memorable young protagonists from beloved classics known for their spirit, humor, and resilience,” the Penguin Classics vice president and publisher wrote to the Pioneer Press.
Haynes is a graduate of Macalester College with a master’s from Hamline University. He grew up in the St. Louis suburb of Breckenridge Hills, where African-Americans and white people were mostly in the same social class. His paternal grandfather was Chinese, and he recalls that on Sundays the family would drive to Chinese restaurants to eat what was considered exotic food in the 1950s.
After “Right by My side” was published, Haynes and New Rivers stayed together for the publication of his novels “Heathens” and “A Star in the Face of the Sky,” his most recent book. He also has ties to Minneapolis-based literary press Milkweed Editions, which published his novels “Somebody Else’s Mama,” “All American Dream Dolls,” and “Live at Five.” And he served on the board of the Loft Literary Center.
Since Haynes taught his last class at SMU in 2019, he considers himself “sort of” retired because he spends a lot of time working with Kimbilio Center for Black Fiction, a national organization he co-founded for fiction writers of the African diaspora. It’s an ambitious non-profit that offers retreats, mentorships, a national fiction prize, a place for readings, and a program that brings Fellows from across the diaspora. “I’m very proud of what we do,” he says.
Travel is also in Haynes’ plans, including readings to young people from “Right By My side” in spring. He’s hoping to make a stop in the Twin Cities but nothing is finalized. For now, he says, “On Tuesday I’m just going to quietly celebrate my Penguin Classic book and my joy it’s getting to new readers.”
