The Giant Playbook

Malik Qla carries a pain no parent should bear: the ghosts of his children’s laughter he never heard, the birthdays missed, the milestones stolen by prison walls. Raised by a single mother in Baltimore after losing his father at 12, he became the "man of the house" overnight—sacrificing his childhood to hustle to take care of his mom and seven siblings.

 

“A boy playing a man becomes a ghost of one.”—Malik Qla

                

But without guidance, he spiraled into survival mode, landing in prison with a haunting truth: 

 

"I traded one cage for another."—Malik Qla

 

Behind bars, he mourned the father he couldn’t be. Letters from his kids asked, "When you coming home?"—but time refused to pause. When he finally walked free, his sons had become men he barely recognized, and his daughters carried wounds he couldn’t soothe. "I failed them," he admits.

 

"But failure taught me what fatherhood really means: showing up, even when you’re late."—Malik Qla

 

Now, Malik Qla pours every lesson learned from stolen years into raising his grandchildren.

 

"I’m not just teaching them to read," he says. "I’m teaching them to rewrite the story our pain tried to dictate."—Malik Qla