Dal Libraries is thrilled to announce that the 2024-2025 book title for Dal Reads is Shut Up You’re Pretty by Téa Mutonji.
The debut story collection from Téa Mutonji was the runner-up in CBC’s 2024 Canada Reads competition, won the Trillium Book Award and Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction (2020), was a finalist in the Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize (2019), and was a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year.
From the publisher, Arsenal Pulp: "In Tea Mutonji's disarming 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."
Shut Up You’re Pretty is the first book to be published under the imprint VS. Books, a series of books curated and edited by writer-musician Vivek Shraya featuring work by new and emerging Indigenous or Black writers, or writers of colour.
Get a Copy of Shut up You’re Pretty
Free paperback copies of the book will be available at Dalhousie Libraries — look for our book stations at a library near you to grab a copy.
EBook and audiobook copies are available by searching Novanet or the Libby app. To borrow materials, just log in with your NetID and password.
First time borrowing an eBook? Get more information and guidance on borrowing eBooks from Dal Libraries.
About Dal Reads
Dal Reads is the university's unity reading program — it's designed to encourage our Dal community to share their love of reading. Dal Reads selections are provided for free and come in ebook, audiobook, and paperback. Launched in 2009, the program brings the Dalhousie community together through the shared experience of reading the same book and taking part in programming and events.