Abstract
This article discusses human–vegetal bonds in Kim de l’Horizon’s award-winning novel Blutbuch. With its transgender perspective informing the text’s botanical imaginary Blutbuch holds, the author maintains, an irreplaceable position in the ecological or phytographic literature. The autofictional tale develops a unique non-binary poetics by creatively working through the impact of individual, arbitrary, and, most importantly, structural violence in the blood family on the coming-of-age and growing-into-a-body of its first-person narrator. “Blood Run Beech Read” explores how de l’Horizon confronts psychic trauma and how human–vegetal bonds and attention to the material language of plants help to disengage from the transgenerational patterns of its reproduction. Suggesting that trans* realities model a different relation to the un/natural: one that dares to forge so far unseen or unintelligible connections, the analysis focuses on human–plant grafts. Specifically, it considers the symbiosis and sympoiesis of beech tree and narrator/protagonist. Through creative translations and careful close readings of the grafting scenes in the autofictional text, “Blood Run Beech Read” argues for the materiality of language as constitutive of transcorporeality.