Kudakwashe Rutendo is a rising star uplifting an emerging author on Canada Reads
The actor is championing Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji on the great Canadian book debate
Actor Kudakwashe Rutendo is championing the short story collection Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji on Canada Reads 2024!
Rutendo starred in the feature film, Backspot, which had its world premiere at TIFF in 2023. She was named a rising star by both TIFF and CBC Arts. Rutendo is also voracious reader — sharing her favourites with her Instagram followers.
The great Canadian book debate will take place on March 4-7. This year, we are looking for one book to carry us forward.
The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem, CBC Listen and on CBC Books. The debates will take place live at 10:05 a.m. ET. You can tune in live or catch a replay on the platform of your choice. Check out all the broadcast details here.
A rising actor championing a rising author
Rutendo is an actor from Fort McMurray, Alta., who fell in love with the stage by performing live poetry. Since then she's starred in feature films Giving Hope: The Ni'cola Mitchell Story and, most recently, Backspot, a queer cheer drama directed by D.W. Waterson and produced by Elliot Page and Page Boy Productions.
She's not just a film star — her theatre credits include roles in the Lost Heroes of Oro at Theatre by the Bay and Vierge at Factory Theatre — and she does it all while juggling her coursework as an undergrad at the University of Toronto.
Rutendo reads dozens of books a year from a variety of genres — fantasy, literary fiction, poetry, genre fiction, thrillers and more — and she's even just finished writing on one of her own, a mix of poetry and prose that follows a Black ballerina who moves to Toronto and struggles with loneliness and mental health issues.
Captivated by stories that contain multitudes and touch everyone who reads them, she's ready to share why Shut Up You're Pretty fits that criteria and offers readers much-needed raw hope.
"Within Shut Up You're Pretty is the promise of hope and future, not in spite of a heavy past, but because of it," said Rutendo in her 30-second pitch on CBC Radio's Commotion. "At once feminist, unapologetic and potent, Shut Up You're Pretty presents the opportunity to reconcile what we've been carrying at a time when it couldn't be more needed," said Rutendo.
"This is one book to carry us forward through negotiating our past."
A book that makes you feel seen
For Canada Reads, Rutendo wanted to choose a book that would stay with her long after the final page. "I just want something to provoke me to emotion," she told CBC Books in an interview. "That's what I think we're all seeking. We're all seeking to be affected by what we consume. That's what art is. It's supposed to leave some sort of lasting impression on us."
After reading Shut Up You're Pretty for the first time, she took three days to fully process it and couldn't stop telling her friends and family about it and what it meant to her. "Then by the third day I was like, 'This book will not leave me.'" And so a Canada Reads book was chosen.
What resonated most with Rutendo were the experiences of Loli, the main character, as a young Black woman growing up in Canada who struggles to feel beautiful and accepted. "It feels like I can finally come to terms with something that I've carried my entire life," she said.
It feels like I can finally come to terms with something that I've carried my entire life.- Kudakwashe Rutendo
"I think when you feel seen, the burden becomes lighter; it's not that I'm just carrying it alone. I now see that we're sharing it equally across the board and I'm seeing that someone else is going through what I'm going through. And in us going through it together, the burden becomes a bit lighter, which was fantastic for me."
Linked stories about growing up
Shut Up You're Pretty is a short fiction collection that tells stories of a young woman coming of age in the 21st century in Scarborough, Ont. The disarming, punchy and observant stories follow her as she watches someone decide to shave her head in an abortion clinic waiting room, bonds with her mother over fish and contemplates her Congolese traditions at a wedding.
Shut Up You're Pretty was on the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize shortlist and won the 2020 Edmund White Award for debut fiction.
CBC Books named Mutonji a writer to watch in 2019. Born in Congo-Kinshasa, Mutonji is also the editor of the anthology Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology. She currently lives in Toronto.
"I was first writing these stories independently and I realized that I was writing the same character for the protagonist," Téa Mutonji said in an interview with CBC Books.
"I wanted to explore why I was doing that. I didn't want to write a collection of short stories about a young Black woman living her life and have it be suggested that it was the experience of all Black women. I did understand, however, that it would probably be regarded as such because we don't have enough young women of colour writing.
I didn't want to write a collection of short stories about a young Black woman living her life and have it be suggested that it was the experience of all Black women.- Téa Mutonji
"I decided to keep it to one character so this could be viewed as one experience. That was important to me, to show that this is one woman experiencing different women in multiple ways and experiencing different experiences in multiple ways.
"This is not at all the experience of every person of colour, of every woman, of every immigrant and of every person from that Galloway neighbourhood."
Uplifting Black women
By choosing Shut Up You're Pretty for Canada Reads, Rutendo hopes to lighten the burden for the Black women who have doubts about their self-worth.
"A lot of my motivation for this is to really press the narrative, especially to young Black women who are reading or just Black women who have carried this, that we are beautiful, we are pretty, we are worthy," she said.
Rutendo was also intentional when using her Canada Reads platform to champion a Black author from an indie publisher.
"In the publishing industry, sometimes it's kind of hard, especially for people of colour to get the opportunities like this," she said. "It's not as easily accessible to everyone equally. So for me I really wanted to be deliberate in trying to seek out people that could really benefit from this because it's not like the stories are any less good. It's not that at all. It's just a difference of opportunities. We can play a really big role in balancing the scales and I want to do that as much as I can."
