This chapter argues that Ntozake Shange's formally experimental 1998 cookbook, If I Can Cook / You Know God Can uses foodways—ways of preparing food and routes that foodstuffs travel—to theorize and prescribe practices of diaspora for Black people in the United States.
Courtney Thorsson

Selected Works
The Sisterhood: Black Women's Literary Organizing, Columbia University Press (forthcoming). Learn about The Sisterhood by watching "Creation Is Everything You Do: Shange, The Sisterhood, and Black Collectivity," Barnard College, March 2021.
"Toni Morrison's Beloved," Remarkable Receptions podcast, June 2022. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher.
"'They could be killing kids forever!': The Atlanta Child Murders in African American Literature," African American Review. 53.4 (Winter 2020): 315-332. Winner of the 2020 Weixlmann Prize for best essay in African American Review about 20th- and 21st-century literature.
Co-author, "Black Women's Food Work as Critical Space." Gastronomica 15.4 (Winter 2015): 34-49.
"James Baldwin and Black Women's Fiction." African American Review 46.4. (2013): 615-31.
Women's Work: Nationalism and Contemporary African American Women's Novels (Virginia 2013).
“Dancing Up A Nation: Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow.” Callaloo 30.2 (Summer 2007): 644-52.
Contact
Twitter: @c_thorsson
Email: thorsson@uoregon.edu
For writing inquiries, please contact Kathleen Anderson.
For speaking inquiries, please contact Annette Luba-Lucas.
Publications
Courses
Term | CRN | Course | Section Title | Fulfills | Syllabus |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Fall 2022 | 12051 | ENG 241 | Introduction to African American Literature | A & L, IP, US, English Major, Lower-Division Elective, English Minor | N/A |
Winter 2022 | 22466 | ENG 360 | African American Writers | IP, US, F-Gender/Ability/Queer Studies/Sexuality, G-Empire/Race/Ethnicity, English Minor |
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Winter 2022 | 22498 | ENG 660 | American Literature: 21st Century African American Fiction | Graduate Studies |
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