SHUT UP YOU’RE PRETTY
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
Téa Mutonji's timely, original, and absorbing stories compose a shattered and shattering bildungsroman. Her lyric, dramatically charged fragments are linked by rich and vital prose, captivating and urgent storytelling, and an eye for the strange and striking detail. Probing the mundane, the traumatic, and all the struggles in between with authenticity, intelligence, and art, Shut Up You're Pretty is a stunning debut. -Daniel Scott Tysdal, author of Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method
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. Tea 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