Téa Mutonji's Shut Up You're Pretty is a short story collection about growing up — read an excerpt now
Kudakwashe Rutendo will champion Shut Up You're Pretty on Canada Reads 2024
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.
Shut Up You're Pretty will be championed by actor Kudakwashe Rutendo on Canada Reads 2024.
The Canada Reads debates will take place on March 4-7. This year, we are looking for one book to carry us forward.
They will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBC Books.
You can read an excerpt from Shut Up You're Pretty below.
If Not Happiness
Jolie insisted that she loved him, that the house felt quiet when he was around, that he tasted very warm, that she was happy. I believed her. Sometimes, when I would sneak inside her bedroom, I noticed how peacefully she slept, as though she was aging against time, becoming kinder and more soft-boned as the summer slipped away.
"You're certain that you love him?" I said.
We used words like "certain" and "particular" to make us sound older. Our mouths had gotten used to swallowing bad air—we found it felt good to spit out words that did not fit.
"Very certain," she said, walking over to the swing and sitting to face me, dragging on a cigarette.
"Tell me, what's it really like?" I said.
"You know, some men want too much from the world. That's the problem. Too many people want too much of it, and then they take until there is nothing else. But with Henry, I don't know. He doesn't want anything."
"How can you be so sure he wants you, then?"
"That's the thing—he has me, so it doesn't matter."
Her answers were vague. They had been vague all summer.
Her answers were vague. They had been vague all summer. - Téa Mutonji
I asked her again what it's like.
"It's like the first day after you wake up recovered from a cold."
I asked her if he touched her.
"To my core, Mermie, to my core."
Jolie started to call me Mermie because I once had a dream that she was a mermaid. We were ten or eleven at the time. She pulled down her drawers to show me that she was in fact not a mermaid. She grabbed my fingers and said, "Feel for yourself."
"I hate it when you call me Mermie."
"I get it. I hate it when Henry calls me Joliette."
"It's not the same thing. That's your real name."
"Yeah, but Gigi was cracked out when she named me. Does that even count?"
I wasn't sure, so I sat silently and watched her finish the cigarette. It was getting colder, but neither one of us had anywhere else to go.
Henry came into Jolie's life by accident. She was home alone one day when he let himself in, asking for directions. Jolie was stretched out on her bed. She looked up and a man was watching her from the hallway. She said hi, and his face reddened.
"I got the wrong house."
"I could have sworn I locked the door. How did you get in?" Jolie said, tilting her head slightly to get a better look at him. He had greased hair and a premature mustache—a handsome man.
"The door was open. I am looking for someone, his name is Turner."
"Wait, your dad?" I said, exhaling smoke and grabbing Jolie by the hand.
We were walking to the park where we spent most of our nights. It was close enough to Galloway that we could rush home in case of an emergency, far enough that nobody who looked could ever find us.
It was close enough to Galloway that we could rush home in case of an emergency, far enough that nobody who looked could ever find us.- Téa Mutonji
"Let me finish," Jolie said. "'I don't know anyone by that name,' I said, and he offered to take me out for coffee."
"That story is unbelievable."
"I know, but it truly happened that way. I pretended to like the coffee, but he was watching me closely and caught on. He said, 'How about I get you some milk and some sugar, Joliette?' His tongue smacking his palate on that ending consonant."
"You sound like the girls in the movies."
"Who knows, maybe I am."
When we got to the park, we took cans of Pabst from our bags and sat on the swings. The seats were tiring; the heads of the bolts were rounding, causing the chain to get stuck. We never really sat to swing. Mostly just to pass time. Just to share a cigarette and watch people turning off their lights.
"How many of us do you think will end up in the same school this fall?" I said.
"Dylan got kicked out, did I tell you? Got caught for selling. It's just me now. And then you, I guess."
"Scary."
She squeezed my hand and said, "Henry said it's best not to associate myself with the kids from around here. That they might bring trouble."
"Does he know that you are the worst of the worst? I say this in awe of you, really."
"That's the thing. He knows. He knows everything."
I wanted her to go into detail. I wanted to know if his face lit up when he heard that Jolie had called the cops on her father, that Turner had been on the run ever since. I wanted to know if Henry was the one buying the cigarettes, and the brandy, and the fall sweaters, and the sneakers. I pictured the two of them holding hands in public, four towns over, kissing and laughing in boutiques, where the owners might question her age, and his, might stare at how olive her skin is, how her curls swallow up her face and all you see in the middle of all that chaos is a raised nose.
I wanted to know if his face lit up when he heard that Jolie had called the cops on her father, that Turner had been on the run ever since.- Téa Mutonji
Jolie said, "This town could use less trouble anyways. Don't you think Mrs Broomfield is happy I'm no longer borrowing her lipstick when she's away."
"You and Henry should start your own trespassers company. Call it Lovers Who Intrude, or Intruding Lovers."
"When did you get so smart, Mermie? Who taught you these big words?"
I wanted to tell her she taught me everything I knew. Instead, I pulled on my cigarette even longer.
We went back to our housing complex.
"Sometimes we don't even have sex. We just fall asleep with ours faces glued together," she said. We were making the mac and cheese she had stolen from Mrs Broomfield's pantry. "He's super deep and serious."
"A romantic," I said.
"No," she said. "He's a realist."
Reprinted with permission from Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji (VS. Books/Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019).
