The Tree-Sound Chora of Toni Morrison's Beloved.

This article analyzes the role of the Kristevan chora—a prelinguistic, semiotic space of maternal affect and subject formation—in Toni Morrison’s novel *Beloved*, focusing on the forest clearing where Baby Suggs calls. It argues that the trees and sounds in this clearing create an interspecies, liminal space that shapes Sethe’s psychological journey toward individuation, linking personal trauma with collective Black history and the other-than-human world. The trees function both as witnesses to Black suffering and as part of a pastoral/anti-pastoral landscape embodying the legacy of slavery, while the novel’s soundscape draws on Black spirituals and pastoral literary traditions, including Shakespearean influences. By situating the clearing as a nexus of place, history, and affect, the article highlights how Morrison’s work enacts a fluid, maternal space where trauma is reenacted and transformed through communal and transhistorical relations.