Shut up, you're pretty : stories / Tea Mutonji.

Tits for cigs -- Parchment paper -- The event -- Down the lakeshore -- If not happiness -- This is only temporary -- Phyllis Green -- Ten-year reunion -- Theresa is getting married -- The boy from my youth -- The common room -- Men, tricks, and money -- The waitress -- Shut up you're pretty -- Women talking -- Old-fashioneds -- Sober party -- Tilapia fish.

In Tea Mutonji's debut story collection, a woman contemplates her Congolese traditions during a family wedding, a teenage girl looks for happiness inside a pack of cigarettes, a mother reconnects with her daughter through their shared interest in fish, and a young woman decides to shave her head in the waiting room of an abortion clinic. These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed.

Canada Reads Nominee 2024