Where the Line Bleeds (Ward) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Where the Line Bleeds:

1. Talk about the influence of grinding poverty on the human spirit, particularly young African American men. Consider its impact on the characters of this book.

2. How are the twins different from one another...and what indication of those differences do we see from the opening pages of the novel?

3. Discuss the impact that their parents' dual abandonments had on the two boys. How different might their lives have been with the presence of one or both parents?

4. Why does Christophe take the path he does? Was their an inevitably to his choice...did you see it coming? Was the plot from that point fairly predictable, or were you surprised by the later developments?

5. What is the significance of the book's title? What does it mean?

6. In the last question from the interview above, Ward says she wants readers to fall in love with her characters and to see them as human beings...not just drug dealers and loafers. What do you feel about her characters? Can you view them as struggling, flawed human beings but still worthy of our caring? Or not?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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