Téa Mutonji

Téa Mutonji is a Canadian writer and poet, whose debut short story collection Shut Up You're Pretty was published in 2019.^[1]

Téa Mutonji
Mutonji in Toronto, October 11, 2022
Born	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Occupation	Author
Alma mater	University of Toronto Scarborough
Notable works	Shut Up You're Pretty (2019)
Notable awards	Trillium Book Award—English Prose (2019) Edmund White Award (2020)

Early life

Born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,^[2] Mutonji came to Canada with her family when she was young and grew up in the Scarborough district of Toronto and in Oshawa.^[3] While living in Scarborough, she worked in the service industry.^[4] She then studied media studies and creative writing at the University of Toronto Scarborough,^[1] and planned to go to law school when she was selected as the first writer to be published by VS. Books, Vivek Shraya's new Arsenal Pulp Press imprint for emerging writers of colour.^[5]

Works

Shut Up You're Pretty, published in 2019, is a collection of linked short stories about a young girl's coming of age in Scarborough's Galloway neighborhood.^[2] The novel centers around Loli and her experiences, which include her move from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Canada, her sexual experiences, grappling with gender roles, and issues revolving around poverty and consent.^[4] Mutonji wrote the novel in part to counter negative stereotypes of the neighbourhood with a narrative that depicted some of her own more positive experiences of having lived there.^[2]

Currently, Mutonji is working on an anthology with Adrian De Leon and Natasha Ramoutar. The anthology focuses on Scarborough writing.^[3]

Themes

In an interview with CityNews, Mutonji stated that she writes from an "activist lens".^[6]

Mutonji describes that being called pretty is not a compliment.^[6] It is offensive because it prioritizes women’s physical appearance and overshadows every other attribute a woman can be.^[6] Instead, Mutonji describes a shift that is happening where women demand that their character is looked at first.^[6]

Accolades

In 2017, the Ontario Book Publishers Organization named Mutonji an emerging writer of the year.^[7]

In 2023 she was named one of the ten winners of the Journey Prize, in a special edition devoted to Black Canadian writers.^[8]

Shut Up You're Pretty was selected for the 2024 edition of Canada Reads, where it was defended by actress Kudakwashe Rutendo.^[9]

Year	Work	Award	Category	Result	Ref
2019	Shut Up You're Pretty	Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize	—	Shortlisted	[10]
		Trillium Book Award	English Prose	Won	[11]
2020		Edmund White Award	—	Won	[12]
2023	—	Journey Prize	—	Won	[8]

Biblio

• —— (2019). Shut Up You're Pretty. Arsenal Pulp Press. ISBN 9781551527550.