In her performances, actor Kudakwashe Rutendo aims to move people and make them feel seen. Naturally, she wanted to pick a Canada Reads book that does the same — and she found those golden qualities in Téa Mutonji's Shut Up You're Pretty.

Shut Up You're Pretty is a linked story collection following Loli, a young Congolese immigrant to Canada, as she grows up and questions her place in the world. The disarming, punchy and observant stories follow her as she watches someone decide to shave their head in a clinic waiting room, bonds with her mother over fish and contemplates her Congolese traditions at a wedding.

As Rutendo prepares for the Canada Reads debates on March 4-7, she and Mutonji joined Ali Hassan in the The Next Chapter studio where they explored what connects people in Shut Up You're Pretty.

Shut Up You're Pretty is a collection of short stories. All of them except one are linked, from the point of view of one character, our protagonist Loli. Why did you feel like short stories were the best way to tell Loli's story?

Téa Mutonji: Two reasons. The first one is that I was practicing how to write in a way that felt accessible. And I struggled for my first couple years.

When I became a reader, I struggled with novels. They felt too long and I didn't have the chance to go into a novel and then come out and feel sort of cohesive, I reentered it. So I kept thinking about what kind of literature I like and what kind of books I like to read. Short stories felt like the obvious choice for me really, because I needed to write something that I would personally also read.

But secondly, when I started considering a career in publishing and when the opportunity to perhaps publish something came up. I was cautious of the lack of representation of Black characters, and I felt a little bit scared to write something that was sort of considered like a cookie cutter, 'This is for all Black women or this is the experience of all Black women.'

The concept of a short story gives me the possibility of individualism. And my goal was sort of to create this illusion that Loli is a different Black person, Black woman in every story. I wanted to create something that felt contained, but also individualized.

Kudakwashe Rutendo: Definitely not in fiction that I've read. And I think, if anything, what really connected with me is that they're just different aspects of Loli that I either see reflected in myself or reflected in the people around me. For me, a lot of it was how people reacted to Loli's Blackness, especially in her Black womanhood. So that was something that I connected with so intimately.

TM: I practice friendship with different characters, not just with [Loli's best friend] Jolie, but I do see how it can be informing with Lisa Sugar, and I see how it could be "wilding" with Olivia and I see how it could be healing with Patty.

That's what I was trying to get at, that there's not one way of understanding relationships, especially when it comes to women and the way that it informs you, the way that it governs your decisions and how you see yourself and how it just protects you from the world, that was important to me. In the end, Loli returns home to her mother and then that becomes sort of the point. When we get to that moment that she's watching her mom and she's considering the fact that her mom had to survive the life that she survived, just to arrive here at this scene of tranquillity. I wanted to play with those concepts of what it means to give yourself to someone and to allow someone to sort of guide you to the next steps of your life.

Female friendship to me is something that I'm thinking of every single day. There's nothing quite like it and I will debate anyone who believes otherwise. I think that that is the real romance. It's always been at least the case for my life. And I would be nowhere in my world if it wasn't for the women who have come into my life at different stages and taken over when I couldn't. And I think that was exactly what I was trying to capture with all these different women that come in and that make an impact on Loli.

It's community care. It's a generational acceptance. To me, it's just everything.

KR: I really, really was drawn to the female friendships because there was something very unique in them in that with her romantic partners, who were often men, it was almost exclusively a sexual exchange or an external exchange, with very little emotive depth going on between the two. But then with her friendships with Patty and even Olivia, it was something more internal, this desperate bond to be seen and this draw to each other and this safety.

It comes down to Loli feeling safe with the women she was surrounded by. I was contrasting the relationships that you see in this book. It's an accurate reflection of life because especially her relationships with the women, they're doing things that I think as a girl, you experience your friends doing for you, like going the extra mile. If you're down, they'll cook food for you. If they're at a party and that you call and say you're fine, they'll come over. They'll leave the party just to comfort you.

Loli's not finding that with a romantic partner. She's not finding that bond with them, but she's finding them in the women who surround her and the women who are picking her up when she can't walk another step. I thought that was beautiful and profound and it drew me to it because that's how I have experienced it, where it was the women around me who managed to hold me up when I couldn't. Sometimes when I feel like I didn't deserve to be.

There's something beautiful in that and the bond that we women have together.