Tangled Roots, a Bloody Forest: Trees, Trauma, and Black Female Bodies in Beloved

Inspired by Toni Morrison's admission in 1989's "Unspeakable Things Unspoken" that "trees have always seemed feminine to me," I argue that the profusion of tree imagery in Morrison's Beloved does indeed exhibit a feminine character—but one infused with a presence unique to the wounded and neglected past of African Americans. Tracing a pattern through Morrison's earlier novels, and drawing on scholars from a range of disciplines, I suggest Morrison's use of trees and their imagery advances a larger project to reclaim symbolic territory previously off-limits to African Americans, identifying an encumbered, complex, and distinctly African American femininity.