Where the Line Bleeds recognises the wounded and their attempts to address their scars, often casting these scars and the path to healing in physical and spatial terms of the landscape. In her work, Ward redresses the notion of the Black community, and more specifically, the Black family as pathological and broken in the wake of slavery, by pointing to alternative configurations of familial relations. In a 2021 interview with Kiese Laymon, in which the authors discuss their connection to the Dirty South and its place in their work, Ward shared her motivation: ‘I want to tell stories that transport people … It may not always feel comfortable … I think there's worth in that’ (Layman and Ward, 2021). The inward gaze and the sharing of memory are crucial elements in uncovering and addressing the ‘dirtiness’ of hidden and untold stories. This chapter investigates how Ward juxtaposes elements of the old South with a newer South, one that seeks to address oppression and inequality, and suggests methods of survival and healing from poverty, trauma, familial stresses and lack of opportunities for her protagonists. Ward's respatialisation of Bois Sauvage shares the texture of the unfolding chronology of Christina Sharpe's ‘wake work’ (Sharpe 2016, 13) undertaking the ‘unfinished project of emancipation’ (5).

Ward introduces her reader to the ‘ungeographic’, spaces where the social lives of Black subjects have been displaced, bringing them into focus through her use of the interior or psychic worlds of her characters, as these geographical spaces are the places where her characters are most comfortable. These are the spaces where they feel safe as they work through their emotions, communicate in a language and style of their own, develop and grow. The reader witnesses the slow awakening of the characters’ unfolding in carefully crafted interior monologues which introduce the reader to interior worlds as rich as the physical landscape. By reframing the landscape of the South, just as Kathryn Yusoff (2018) reframes the impact of conquest and extraction during the Anthropocene, Ward brings untold stories to the surface. Laying unknown stories alongside familiar ones opens the landscape and allows for a new freedom for Black bodies. I argue that, using the interior geography of her characters, Ward respatialises the old South and creates a place where the old and the new collide; by mapping the richness of the ‘ungeographic’, Ward reveals redrawn territories where her characters thrive.