
Today I started working with Pearl Cleage's unprocessed manuscripts at Emory University. My students next term will analyze images of Cleage's early handwritten drafts of Till You Hear From Me alongside the published novel. Emory acquired Cleage's materials in 2012 and recently received a grant to catalogue them. There is a video from Cleage's 2011 visit to Emory here. As the image above reflects, the materials are now in cardboard boxes. After sifting through the contents of several boxes, with the help of Emory's Finding Aid, I located Cleage's manuscripts for Till You Hear From Me. As I soon learned, Cleage often used several colors of ink while sketching her novel on lined, loose leaf pages. These vibrant pages will invite students to explore the visual and linguistic dimensions of Cleage's composition process.