Growing up in the mid-1960s as a white girl in Tuskegee, Alabama, Mab Segrest attended a segregated private school that her parents had helped found in response to a court order years earlier to integrate public high schools. In the shadows of governor George Wallace’s racist violence, history had “come to [her] front door.” Seeking a better understanding of the U.S. South, she found William Faulkner’s
The Sound and the Fury in the local library. Perplexed by the interior monologue of its opening pages, she forged ahead in…
by Dr. Gil Greggs, Director of Academic Programs, St. David’s School, Raleigh NC
From reading
Crime and Punishmentas a high school senior and the Depression-era masterpieces
Absalom, Absolom!and
Let Us Now Praise Famous Menin college, Gil Greggs describes a personal journey of discovery about the ways literature connects readers to the real world.
Later, he describes how the portraits painted by Rembrandt and photographs taken by Richard Avedon help us notice and better appreciate the humanity of the people around us and to perceive hints of their inner lives.
