Shut Up You’re Pretty

Reviews

“The stories are vivid and unsettling in their detail … Mutonji writes with grit and quick-witted humour. The ease with which these stories unfold is a facet of the author’s craft: the prose holds its emotion in the same way the characters hold their pain.” — Quill & Quire, starred review

“Each story is a separate, richly-described glimpse into an aspect of the protagonist’s life, and together they form a whole picture of a young woman who is struggling to understand herself and her world.” — Book Riot

“A sense of assuredness permeates Mutonji’s writing in Shut Up You’re Pretty. Through a series of 18 strikingly raw vignettes, Loli’s identity flows like the Congolese river she is named after.” — Toronto Star

“This book asks us to witness the journey of a girl into womanhood, holding in her arms the fragile understandings of femininity as a commodity, femininity as a caretaker, femininity as a storyteller. Dulled by the residue of trauma and sharpened by the expectations of the streets, Téa’s characters are painfully and beautifully rendered in these gritty, must-read stories.” — Catherine Hernandez, author of Scarborough

“Shut Up You’re Pretty is a chronicle of millennial malaise, gendered and seaming with a discontent that does not sleep on the status quo of any page. Téa Mutonji is a writer who is assured and measured with a style all her own, holding a hand up to greats like Hurston and Kincaid. She takes back the 21st century in this delicious feast of stories as vivid and taut as they are understated.” — Canisia Lubrin, author of Voodoo Hypothesis and augur