The Art of Eating Bitter chronicles my family's journey from Harlem to a leafy suburb and back. It also tells a second story about my struggles as a hausfrau dad.

Faced with the task of helping my children navigate a world that has undergone seismic changes and is vastly different from my own childhood, I found strength and guidance in the lessons I'd learned from my parents, who were willing to eat the bitterest bitter for the sake of their children. Driven to pass down this legacy, which I hoped would give my children the grit they'd need when life eventually threw them knuckleballs, I became an outlier and an extremist to recreate for them a childhood that had long gone out of favor.

I became an analog dad who lived without a cellphone and got around town with my kids on a bicycle. I fought against overscheduling and chose to declutter my kids' lives of the clutter of stuff and enrichment activities. And I tried to nudge them to be proud of who they were. Not everything went smoothly, but our life together turned into an adventure.

Part memoir and part family history, this essay collection tells the story of one man's obsession to follow in his parents' footsteps and become a father whom his children could be proud of.