Cooking often begins as a practical daily task, yet it can reveal far more about relationships, expectations, and personal identity than many people realize. A shared meal has the power to reflect generations of tradition while opening conversations about how families continue to evolve.
In How Come You Don’t Cook?, Itianu Emiaj transforms an everyday question into a meaningful exploration of modern life. Through humor, heartfelt storytelling, and relatable experiences, the novel encourages readers to look beyond the kitchen and discover the deeper conversations that shape homes and relationships.
Everyday Conversations That Reveal Bigger Truths
At the center of How Come You Don’t Cook? is Onyka, whose reflections on her family’s past guide readers through stories filled with warmth, insight, and emotional honesty. As she revisits experiences across generations, each memory offers another perspective on the role cooking has played within family life. Meals become symbols of care, responsibility, tradition, and the expectations people quietly carry throughout their lives.
The novel presents these moments with a refreshing balance of humor and thoughtful observation. Everyday conversations feel authentic because they resemble discussions that happen around dining tables across the world. Readers may recognize familiar situations involving parents, partners, siblings, or extended family members. These recognizable moments make the story inviting while encouraging deeper reflection.
Cooking represents affection, commitment, sacrifice, personal choice, and changing identities. Every shared recipe and family tradition carries emotional meaning that extends well beyond the kitchen. Through Onyka’s storytelling, readers see how simple household routines often influence relationships in lasting ways.
Rather than offering simple answers, How Come You Don’t Cook? invites readers to consider how traditions develop and how they continue to influence each new generation. That openness gives the story its lasting appeal.
Family, Gender Roles, and Changing Expectations
One of the book’s strongest qualities is its thoughtful examination of gender roles within contemporary society. Many households continue to navigate expectations that have existed for generations, even as professional opportunities and social realities continue to evolve.
The novel explores the pressure many women experience while balancing careers alongside domestic responsibilities. It also considers the lingering belief that women naturally belong in the kitchen while men primarily serve as providers. These long-standing assumptions appear throughout family interactions, creating situations that are sometimes humorous, occasionally uncomfortable, and always thought provoking.
Instead of presenting conflict through dramatic confrontation, the narrative relies on genuine human experiences. Family members express different viewpoints shaped by their upbringing, personal values, and lived experiences. This allows readers to appreciate why opinions vary while considering whether those traditions continue to serve modern families.
A particularly meaningful message emerges through the book’s central idea:
“It’s time we stopped asking who should cook and started asking how we can cook together.”
That statement captures the novel’s spirit perfectly. Cooperation replaces obligation. Shared responsibility strengthens relationships. Respect grows through understanding rather than expectation.
The story encourages couples and families to rethink inherited assumptions while creating healthier partnerships built on fairness, communication, and mutual appreciation.
A Story Filled With Warmth, Humor, and Lasting Reflection
Although the themes address important social questions, How Come You Don’t Cook? remains approachable because of its light-hearted tone. Humor naturally softens difficult conversations, making the book engaging instead of overwhelming. Readers encounter moments that encourage laughter alongside thoughtful reflection, creating a satisfying emotional balance throughout the narrative.
The writing invites readers into conversations rather than lectures. Characters express opinions that feel believable because they reflect situations many people encounter in everyday life. Whether discussing marriage, family traditions, household duties, or changing social expectations, the dialogue remains grounded in genuine human experiences.
Another strength lies in the novel’s ability to encourage empathy. Different perspectives receive thoughtful attention, allowing readers to understand why individuals hold particular beliefs even when opinions differ. That balanced approach reflects the author’s broader goal of encouraging compassion, understanding, and respectful dialogue.
For readers interested in contemporary fiction that combines meaningful social commentary with engaging storytelling, this book offers an enjoyable reading experience. Book clubs may also find it especially rewarding, as its themes naturally encourage conversation long after the final chapter.
Those interested in exploring How Come You Don’t Cook? can purchase the book through the author’s official website.
About the Author
Itianu Emiaj is a Mozambican author whose stories draw inspiration from everyday conversations, personal experiences, and the lives of family members, friends, and individuals encountered throughout her journey. Her writing encourages readers to engage thoughtfully with complex topics, including marriage, motherhood, family relationships, and social expectations, with the hope of building compassion, mutual understanding, and respect for different perspectives.
Her published works include This Body Is Not Mine, How Come You Don’t Cook?, You Don’t Have a Husband Are You Okay?, I’m Afraid of My Protector, Who Is Going to Take Care of You When You Are Old?, and Who Will Save My Brother. While she identifies as a female fiction writer, many of her stories are inspired by real-life experiences and conversations, reflecting situations familiar to countless readers. Beyond literature, Emiaj is also a human rights activist whose work focuses on addressing discrimination, reducing inequality, and supporting the empowerment of marginalized communities through transformational social change.
A Book That Sparks Meaningful Conversations
How Come You Don’t Cook? reminds readers that ordinary questions often lead to extraordinary discussions. By blending humor, family history, and thoughtful reflection, Itianu Emiaj delivers a contemporary novel that encourages greater understanding of relationships, shared responsibilities, and evolving social roles. It is a timely read that celebrates conversation, compassion, and the possibility of building stronger families through cooperation and mutual respect.
We had the privilege of interviewing the author. Here are excerpts from the interview:
Hi, thank you so much for joining us today! Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
My name is Itianu Emiaj and I’m a female fiction writer although I’m always conflicted with saying fiction given that the stories that I write about are based on real life scenarios either my own or other people lived experiences, of people that I know or conversations that I had or heard from strangers and with the view to influence change in people’s lives, hopefully for the better. And before I unintentionally start an unnecessary debate or controversy, I’m not questioning the concepts (fiction vs nonfiction), starting a campaign to change the categories or anything in those or any other lines. I’m just saying what I feel when I have to decide a category where my writing fits.
Besides being a writer, I’m a human rights activist, and most of my life’s work has been facilitating transformational processes to fight discrimination and inequality and support marginalized groups’ empowerment.
Please tell us about your journey.
I consider myself a citizen of the world because I don’t believe in borders, given that they are people-made, and I love to travel, meet new people, explore different cultures, and enrich myself with the beautiful mosaic that human diversity is made of. Plus, there is an illusion that we are more different than we are. When in fact, the reality shows that the core of human nature and fundamental needs are pretty much the same. Nonetheless, I’m Mozambican, as I was lucky enough to be born in Mozambique.
My journey as a writer started way before I grabbed the pen and made the decision to write. And what do I mean by that?
Since I was little, I felt like I didn’t belong here. Yes, it might sound odd, weird, or let’s say it, crazy. But that’s how I genuinely felt most times. There was something odd about how human beings related to one another in their consistent inconsistencies, if that makes sense, which made me sad. There were too many contradictions that were embedded in many rules that we need to follow, and it was confusing to me, as if we were complicating simple things. As I grew up, rather than disappearing, the feelings of sadness and confusion just kept growing bigger and bigger, and for many years, more than I can count, numerous thoughts about the contradictions started to consistently have long and exhaustive meetings in my head. Exhaustive because in my head it was rather simple, and yet the reality showed otherwise.
At a given point, I thought that I would write them as essays for publication or papers for presentation at conferences regarding related topics. However, years passed and due to my crazy work schedule, yeah, being a human rights activist is not for the faint of heart (smile), the papers and essays never came to life. Yet the meetings in my head never stopped. In the end, sadness and confusion invited frustration to the meetings, and this one doesn’t have patience.
So, last year, during my yearly holidays, I had a “call” from the creator with a deadline telling me that procrastination time was long overdue, and it was time to start writing. Unfortunately for me (so I thought), as a “punishment for my laziness” (smile), it would no longer come in the shape of papers or essays as I initially planned but rather books. Six, to be more specific, for now. When I received the call, I nearly passed out given that I never considered myself a writer and, different from some friends of mine who enjoy writing, I was never inclined to do so, except when it comes to reports, those I enjoyed writing. But then again, it’s a different kind of writing. Nevertheless, there it was, the call, without an invitation but with a challenge that I could no longer run away from. It had caught up with me. If I’m being honest, I was also tired of providing the office in my head free of charge for those meetings to happen. Therefore, it was time to gather my fears, insecurities, and impostor syndrome (I’m not a writer, remember?) and put an end to such meetings in my head and set them free in the world. So, after my well-deserved holidays, my sabbatical year to write the books began, and I decided to write in a way that I wished the conversations about the topics looked like… heart to heart. So, here they are fresh from the oven and ready to be consumed and hopefully enjoyed by those who choose them as companions. May the readers feel the heart in the conversations.
What are the strategies that helped you become successful in your journey?
I measure my success based on the kind of impact I have or try to have in people’s lives, regardless of the type of relationship that I have with them (family, friends, colleagues, etc). Having said that, what has made my journey successful is my ability to, even when I’m having what I consider to be uncomfortable or difficult conversations, genuinely listen to people even when I don’t agree. I try to understand what people say and where they are coming from, or even how they feel when I don’t understand. Oh yeah… at times we simply don’t understand others. However, if it’s not a crime or something harmful to anybody, I peacefully disagree while respecting their views. We live in a diverse world rich with a myriad of views and experiences; therefore, we are bound to disagreement, which doesn’t mean we are at war with one another.
I’d add my openness and ability to acknowledge my ignorance. I don’t need to have an opinion on everything because I don’t know everything. This allows me to consistently learn from diverse ways of seeing and understanding life and the world. Finally, yet the most important in my view, I try to be empathic.
I believe that once we realise that not everything is about us or is a competition, know when to let go of things that don’t affect us or that are none of our business, learn and consider ways of seeing the world fundamentally different from ours, life and the world becomes more enriching than divisive.
Any message for our readers?
I hope with my writing to inspire deep and honest, self and collective, reflections about the embedded contradictions within the rules that we grow up blindly following regarding topics such as marriage, children, old age, among others that I write about which, in current times, are violently cracking while making us miserable. I’m also inviting readers to start or continue (for those who already started) their journey of unlearning patterns and behaviors informed by such rules that may no longer serve them. Insisting on blindly following them is making us miserable. In addition, I also extend the invitation to those who, like me, have been suffering, silently or loudly, refusing to accommodate themselves to such rules, to gather all the courage and power within to embrace and live the life that they wanted for themselves all along, unapologetically.
We live in a beautiful mosaic, with us being the main pieces, where the norm is diversity, and although the invention of a one-size-fits-all recipe might have worked before, it is currently the poison that leads to unnecessary and dangerous polarization with harmful impacts on people’s lives. We are way more alike in what we want, at our core, and way more diverse in the way we want, and it’s ok. The mosaic has space to accommodate all the diversity, and that is what makes it insanely beautiful! No one needs to shrink for others to exist.
Thank you so much, Itianu Emiaj, for giving us your precious time! We wish you all the best for your journey ahead!