“Another Map of the South Side”: Native Son as Postcolonial Novel

“Another Map of the South Side” traces the resonances between Native Son and the film Bigger watches during a pivotal scene to tease out the international and colonial political contexts of Wright’s novel. Reading the film’s references to Trader Horn, this essay argues that Bigger Thomas moves between the positions of native and native informant, without fully achieving the position of explorer himself. Mapping Dark Continent tropes onto Chicago’s mostly black South Side, the novel situates imagined black “otherness” within a global context, establishing synchronisms between U. S. and global forms of economic exploitation, racialized epistemologies, and knowledge production.