Pressure: From FBI Fugitive to Freedom tells the story of Malik Wade, a San Francisco youth who evolved into a high-level nationwide drug dealer and landed on the FBI’s wanted list. The book chronicles Malik’s life growing up in inner-city San Francisco, his life in Canada when he was on the run from the FBI, his conviction and fourteen-year incarceration in federal prison, and his transformation and redemption after his release.

This teaching guide, Release, primarily targets 15- to 24-year-old youth facing the same social challenges that Malik did as a teenager struggling to find his place in the world. While it’s designed for transitional-age youth, a range of age groups will benefit. It uses hands-on, interactive activities designed to get readers to think about how they can avoid the pitfalls confronting young people living in challenged communities, particularly young men of color.

This guide integrates Freire’s pedagogical concepts of conscientization, dialogue, and praxis, as well as Bloom’s taxonomy of learning in a series of lessons that focus on the seven core themes in the book or what Malik describes as The Seven Levels to Elevation.

Malik entered the federal prison system an arrogant and selfish drug dealer who only cared about making money. He soon started to transform himself into a humble, educated, and enlightened man who wanted to help and heal others. Several years into his prison sentence, his desire to mentor and help those in need was solidified when he met a young man from Richmond, California, named Gino. Gino had an infamous reputation and was known on the street as a Young Gunner. Gino was serving five years on drug charges when the two met. Over the course of the next two years, Malik mentored Gino and helped him disconnect himself from his old friends and violent and unhealthy ways of thinking. His friendship with Gino is what ultimately propelled him to dedicate his life to teaching young people. Eventually, Malik committed himself to spending the remainder of his fourteen-year sentence vigorously educating himself so that he could help train and mentor more young men and women who, like Gino, come from challenged backgrounds.