Mark Greenside

Author

Mark Greenside grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York. His mother was a teacher and his father a lawyer. He has been a civil rights activist, Vietnam War protester, Vista volunteer, union leader, author, and college professor.
He attended University of Wisconsin - and left Madison with two degrees, a teaching credential, a wife, and an unplanned honeymoon detention in a Chicago jail during the Democratic National Convention. He spent the first night at Lincoln Park with future Chicago 7 defendants Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. He spent the second night in jail. The third night he was in George McGovern's suite in the Sheraton Blackstone watching it all on TV.
He taught history and political science at a black university in Greensboro, North Carolina. Shortly thereafter, Mark moved to Berkeley, California. He was still married, unemployed, living on food stamps, and was accepted to law school but decided not to go. [His mother must have loved that decision]. He eventually started teaching history and political science at Merritt College in Oakland. He did that until he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to start an oral history project which got him involved in working with older people, which got him interested in stories and storytelling. Then he went to Vista College in Berkeley and set up what at the time was one of the largest and most comprehensive older adult education programs in the nation. After leaving that position, he held several jobs, got divorced, married again, this time to his current wife, Donna Umeki, and eventually landed a coveted position as a full time professor.
In the mid 1990s, Mark started writing more seriously. He published a book of his short stories, titled I Saw A Man Hit His Wife. In his 2008 book, I’ll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in A Small Village in Brittany, he tells the story of how he was drawn to Brittany. In 1992, he was a New Yorker living in California, doubting Thomas, downwardly mobile, political lefty, writer, and lifelong sceptic--when he was dragged by his then girlfriend Kathryn to a tiny Celtic village in Brittany at the westernmost edge of France, in Finistere, “the end of the world.” He falls out of love with her and in love with Brittany. During that trip, at the age of 47, Mark ends up purchasing a house in Brittany. At the time of the purchase he had only $5,000 to his name and the most money he had ever spent on anything was $1,500 for a used car. The first paragraph of the book provides a sense of what Mark is like and how he feels about Brittany.
In 2018, Mark had two books published, a follow-up to I’ll Never Be French called (Not Quite) Mastering the Art of French Living and a novel titled A Night at the End of the Sun, or Isaiah Can You See?”

Thus far, Mark has enjoyed a rewarding and colorful life. These are just a few of the highlights:

He was present at Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington, DC on August 28, 1963.
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, he learned the FBI has a 25-page file on him
The FBI visited him when he was teaching at a predominantly Black college in Greensboro, North Carolina. The school was visited by the KKK and National Guard. One student was killed.