Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town

by Warren St. John

Paper Book, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

796.334092

Genres

Sports and Leisure

Nonfiction

All Topics

Collection

Sports - Soccer

Publication

Spiegel & Grau (2009), 320 pages

Description

American-educated Jordanian Luma Mufleh founds a youth soccer team comprised of children from Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkan states, and elsewhere in the refugee settlement town of Clarkston, Georgia, bringing the children together to discover their common bonds as they adjust to life in a new homeland.

Media reviews

School Library Journal

The book is a sports story, a sociological study, a tale of global and local politics, and the story of a determined woman who became involved in the lives of her young charges.

— 1 more

Publishers Weekly

St. John begins with an inspiring description of a beautifully played game and then delves into the team's formation, but his storytelling takes on the methodical approach of a long series of newspaper articles that lack narrative flair and progression.

User reviews

LibraryThing member elbakerone

Outcasts United - the story of The Fugees, a soccer team of refugee children from a small town in Georgia - at first look seems to have all the makings of a Disney movie. The story unfolds by introducing readers to Luma Mufleh, a Jordanian woman driven to make a life for herself in the USA while

missing the family that disapproves of her new home. But Luma is no Disney heroine, she is a rough-edged, straight-talking, disciplinarian and her new job as soccer coach to The Fugees is much more than the plot to a family movie. Taking on leadership of three age groups, Luma's life becomes entwined with those of the players and often she is called upon to be much more than a coach and take on the roles of friend, mother, confidant, provider, chauffeur and counselor to her young charges and their families.

Warren St. John writes the book in a distinctly journalistic style. At times this causes choppiness to the story, but ultimately it is an effective way to narrate the various facets of the lives of The Fugees' players, their experiences, and the various effects of refugee resettlement on the town of Clarkston, Georgia. St. John tackles the issues of racism plaguing the town as well as the challenges faced by the resettlement aides and adjustments of the longtime town residents. One of the strengths of this book, also, is that Clarkston, Georgia paints a portrait of refugees on a global scale. Though some parts of the United States have been havens for newcomers from a single country, players on The Fugees bring stories of war-zones, famine, and political unrest from all over the world.

From Iraq to Sudan, Kosovo to Burundi, Liberia to Jordan, Outcasts United is truly an international story. Luma Mufleh's life in particular is worthy of great admiration for her discipline and dedication in coaching three teams of children facing some of life's greatest challenges. With post-traumatic stress, poverty, language barriers and the luring threat of gang life, it is Mufleh and the game of soccer that bring the group together as an oddly mixed family. Together they must discover that even above winning and losing, what really matters is how you play the game.

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24 more

LibraryThing member lasomnambule

At first glance, Warren St. Johns’s Outcasts United promises little more than a Mighty Ducks-meets-The Kite Runner kind of feel-good tale. I have no doubt that Random House will sell plenty of copies of this book, and well they should. Outcasts United ought to easily replace Michael Bamberger’s

Wonderland on the reading lists of mostly-white suburban high school and middle school English classes. Maybe it takes an easily-read and -digested tale about underdogs and sports, with a compelling heroine at the center, set in the Deep South to remind kids and their parents that refugees exist in the United States.

St. Johns does some things well in this tale. He avoids syrupy-sweet pathetic appeals, and his journalistic point of view helps him do so. When one of the wannabe Fugees is shot in the face in an act of gang violence, St. Johns avoids pathos with the skill of a New York Times-caliber journalist, presenting facts without overkill. In Luma, he’s depicted a powerful, memorable figure who should be any woman’s role model. She’s compelling and fiercely strong, and someone a reader really wants to meet. St. Johns has also depicted Clarkston in a vivid, real way—any white small-town Southerner could easily recognize their own hometown in his descriptions of xenophobia and its consequences.

However, a discerning reader might wonder if this book’s not a little *too* easy, a little too pat. While St. Johns is clearly writing for a wide audience, to include middle schoolers, parents, and PG moviegoers alike, the descriptions of fled violence in places like Africa and Eastern Europe are a little anemic—and the refugees’ problems too easily solved by soccer, Thriftown, and Luma’s cleaning company. The book indulges a bit much in Disney-style feel-goodery, and one can almost envision the Jonas brothers playing the Bosnian Fugees, with Parminder Nagra of Bend it Like Beckham fame as Luma. Everyone would leave the theater happy. Right?

Wrong. This reader isn’t sure where the book leads us, as readers, and whether it encourages us to truly engage in a consideration of the refugee experience in the United States. Even a 15-year-old might be better served by an encounter with Dave Eggers’s What is the What--itself hyper-publicized, but containing a much more gritty, combative look at the Lost Boys and their plight. Perhaps it’s a cynical view of a sweetly entertaining, informative book, but Outcasts United should serve as appetizer or dessert to those who want to learn more about refugees in America.

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LibraryThing member nolagrl

After reading "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer," Warren St. John's previous book detailing the personalities who follow the Alabama football team in their RVs during football season, I was looking forward to "Outcasts United." I anticipated another examination of the intersection of personal stories,

cultural attitudes, and sport.

In this, I was not disappointed. "Outcasts United" does an admirable job of getting at the larger story surrounding a young soccer coach and her team of refugee players in Clarkston, Georgia. The boys' backgrounds of ethnic struggle, the reactions of a town once lily-white now coping with floods of refugee resettlement, the dangers posed by American gangs and violence... all detailed with the research and perspective that one would expect from a New York Times reporter.

But overall, I was slightly let down. For all the amassing of dates and details, I was left wanting something. Wanting to know more about the boys (epilogue not withstanding), more about Luna... the book felt like a mass of reportage lacking, well, a point. Following through a season (roughly, with previous seasons for build-up), which worked so well in "Rammer Jammer," didn't yield the same story arc. Whether the epilogue should have been given the time and attention to become a few more actual chapters for closure, or whether the narrative should have focused even more closely on fewer boys, or whether there just is no real arc to be sketched, the story seemed oddly jumpy at times, and incomplete.

That aside, there are passages that capture the joy and intensity of youth soccer, the fear and strangeness of refugee life, the clash between cultures and how that clash is at once resolved and never to be resolved. "Outcasts" is ultimately worth the reading, and its themes are certainly worth discussing. And St. John's byline is always worth watching for on the daily pages.

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LibraryThing member karen_o

I requested it because I was interested in the juxtaposition of a homogeneous American town with a large refugee population. What was in my library that matched me with this book? I have utterly no idea. But it ended up being an excellent match.

I am so NOT a sports person. In fact, I have zero clue

about soccer, absolutely loathe football, and the only organized team sport I know anything about is baseball. Despite that I had no difficulty reading the book even with the inclusion of soccer plays.

In any event, I finished the book this evening and I'm very grateful to LTER and Random House for sending it to me. I thoroughly enjoyed it and, even though I skimmed a lot of the soccer descriptions, I took a lot from this book. Both about the immigrant experience and about the histories of the countries from which these kids hailed. I was/am woefully ignorant about that.

Near the end of the book one of the kids comments that most Americans look through him and seem afraid or uncomfortable getting to know him. I'm appalled and ashamed to admit that I'm pretty much like that. I'm not opposed to immigration, per se, I just don't quite know how to deal with it. (And I have a really, really tough time with most Asian accents which makes me less willing to attempt to communicate.)

This book has given me a different outlook and hopefully will make me a better person.

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LibraryThing member SqueakyChu

Warren St. John has so warmly captured the story of the Fugees, the youth soccer teams composed of players that had been refugees from war-torn countries within Africa, Asia, and Europe. Luma, a young Jordanian woman who defied her parents by leaving Jordan is their coach. Dealing with poverty, low

income, neighborhood crime, inability to understand English or American customs, the refugee residents of Clarkston, a small town outside of Atlanta, face many obstacles in their adaptation to life in the United States. Even for Luma, who deals with with town hall, the mayor, the southern white population, and affluent opponent teams, getting what she wants for her soccer players proves to be quite a challenge. Luma takes the sons of some of these families under her wing by providing not only soccer training, tutoring, and personal family help, but also becoming a source of inspiration to her soccer players thereby inducing them to have a cause, work for that cause, and learn to appreciate the differences in one another.

I was really taken by this story if only because it is the way I’d like to see the real world operate. I like the thought that each of us has a part to play in making this a better world. Luma feels that she is no hero, but she certainly is a template or a source of inspiration. This is not a story about winning or losing, but one of hope.

Reading the story, it is good if one has a sense of how soccer is played because the text does have quite a bit of play-by-play action of soccer games. If soccer is not your thing, however, then lightly skip through these and read the real story – the one that shows us how we must all work together in a diverse world to get along.

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LibraryThing member kidzdoc

Clarkston, Georgia, the setting for this fast-paced and entertaining book by The New York Times reporter Warren St. John, is only 10 miles west of downtown Atlanta, yet it seems further away from that, in distance and time. It is a town I'm quite familiar with, having worked in a pediatrician's

office there for two afternoons a week during my final year of residency training. However, the average resident of the Atlanta metropolitan area wouldn't have the slightest idea how to get there. As you approach the city from Atlanta on East Ponce De Leon Avenue it looks like a small sleepy Southern town, with cracked two lane roads traveled by working class whites and blacks, the frequent mournful whistle of freight trains, and storefronts that seem to be frozen in the 1940s. However, as you head toward downtown Clarkston, you are surprised to see people in decidedly non-Western garb walking on the dirt-covered paths along the roads. These people were relocated to Clarkston by US government relief agencies, starting in the mid 1990s, from war torn lands such as Liberia, Kosovo, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

Those of you who have read Dave Eggers' "novel" What Is the What may recognize Clarkston as the town that the Sudanese narrator is placed after he is transported from a refugee camp in Africa.

Outcasts United is the story of three youth soccer teams, called the Fugees, who come from the refugee community in Clarkston. Their coach is Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman, who lives in nearby Decatur and gets the idea to form the Fugees after seeing a group of kids playing an impromptu game of soccer as she is driving through Clarkston. Mufleh somehow keeps these teams going, almost singlehandedly, and despite opposition from the older residents of the town and its obstructionist mayor, lack of support from incompetent bureaucrats of the local YMCA, and the struggles that she and her charges face.

However, the true heroes of this story are the kids, who range in age from 10-16, most of whom have seen death and suffering both in their home countries and in the US, whose parents are engaged in a daily struggle to survive. The teammates become family members, despite their different backgrounds and languages, and Mufleh is a source of stability of comfort that most of the kids do not have at home.

I highly recommend this book, as it is an inspiring and delightful story told by a gifted writer.

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LibraryThing member mojomomma

There is so much soccer in the book that it becomes tedious if you don't know (or care) about it. I found myself skipping those paragraphs describing game play and just scanning for the score to see if the Fugees won or lost that match. Luma, the coach, is an interesting, if not entirely likable

character. I really enjoyed the stories of the players and their families and their reactions and adaptations to life in the U.S. A good editing would have improved the book immensely, I think. The call to social justice is lost in the maze of soccer details.

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LibraryThing member lahochstetler

Clarkston, Georgia: an Atlanta suburb, and a resettlement community for thousands of refugees from some of the most war-torn parts of the world. Outcasts United is the story of a youth soccer team (three teams, really) comprised of Clarkston's newest young residents. The teams, the Fugees, face

nearly insurmountable odds. The players and their families have found themselves torn from home, in a foreign environment, with few resources. Backbreaking work schedules, few resources, and shell shock all haunt the resettled families of Clarkston. But many of the children from these families share a love of soccer. Under the direction of a dedicated coach, Luma Mufleh, a Jordanian woman looking to find her niche in the United States, the Fugees create a team, against seemingly insurmountable odds. The Fugees lack equipment and practice space, they also face significant opposition from the longtime residents of Clarkston, including the mayor and city council. Clarkston is clearly a town in transition, and one that is having a hard time handling that transition. In telling the story of Clarkston and the Fugees, St. John has crafted an engaging narrative that wraps hope and seeming hoplessness into a story in which its nearly impossible to not root for the kids. Throughout the book St. John remains sympathetic to all of the parties in the book. It's easy to cheer on the kids; the longtime residents of Clarkston are less sympathetic. Still, St. John does an admirable job of trying to understand the myriad of problems Clarkston's mayor, in particular, tries to manage as he deals with a growing population with diverse needs. This is a story about a community, but it is also important to note that this is a story about a soccer team too. For those who are not terribly interested in soccer (such as myself), I did find there to be quite a bit of discussion of the sport- the plays manuevers used during the games. This I did not care for quite as much, and found myself thumbing forward a few pages for most of the in-depth discussions of gametime. That said, there is still much here to interest the general reader of literary non-fiction. I was taken with the Fugees' story, and I am certain many other readers will be too.

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LibraryThing member Litfan

"Outcasts United" is at once three stories: the story of atrocities survived by refugees in their homelands, the story of their precarious assimilation into the small, homogenous town of Clarkson, Georgia, whose residents react in varied ways to the newcomers, and the story of the Fugees, the youth

soccer team who provided these refugee boys with a place to belong. It's no small task to balance these three different threads and weave them into a coherent whole, and Warren St. John does a beautiful job, rendering a book that leaves the reader both educated and uplifted.

The story chronicles the development of the Fugees, from the moment they are first pulled together by their tough, no nonsense Jordanian coach, Luma, to their participation in tournaments. The team faces the challenges of any other soccer team, along with additional challenges: lack of funding, no field of their own on which to play (they are met with resistance by the town when trying to use public fields for practice), and team members who are suffering from posttraumatic stress and profound grief. The reader roots for this team from the beginning, laughs and cries with them. A wonderful true story that is highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member Heatherlee1229

Outcasts United is not really a book about soccer. Sure, soccer is the backdrop upon which the story is told, but the book is really about the refugee kids, their families, the town of Clarkston, and Coach Luma. It is about how a bunch of kids who spoke ten plus different languages formed a tight

bond and great friendships because of their common love of soccer. It is about how Luma Mufleh came to the United States against the will of her wealthy Jordanian parents to do what was best for her, despite how difficult she would find that to be. It is about how so many families, from so many different war-torn or poverty-stricken countries all came to live in the same town, how these families dealt with the extreme culture shock and adapted to life in the United States, and how Luma’s amazing strength and generosity helped so many of these families adjust. It is about how the residents of Clarkston, Georgia dealt with all these new faces, languages, and cultures in their small (mostly white) town – and for some residents, how they simply weren’t able to deal with these changes.

So much about this book fascinated me. I loved learning about the different circumstances that brought these families together in the United States, I loved learning about how they handled the huge changes they were forced into when they came to the U.S., and I loved reading about the camaraderie that developed between the boys on the team. Some of the boys had been taught from birth to hate people of certain nationalities, only to be faced with boys of these exact nationalities playing on their soccer team – and they had to find a way to get along, and more than that, think and behave as teammates. The story is ultimately a heartwarming one – nothing about these kids’ lives was easy, yet they were so successful in many ways (not JUST with soccer, although that’s definitely one of the ways).

Again, I really liked Outcasts United. Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member hemlokgang

If you want to read about kids, soccer, politics, refugees, acceptance, courage, and discipline all in one book, then here is an excellent selection. I found "Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town", by Warren St. John, to be an outstanding book. St. John's writing style immediately

engages the reader on multiple levels. He weaves in and out and around the intimate details of the individual and the macro-level sociopolitical issues of many different nations, and he does each with dexterity and grace. The people whose lives St. John chronicles are heartwarming, infuriating, and inspirational all at once. From Luma, the coach who insists on a perfect balance of nurturing and discipline, to the players trying to find their place in and between two vastly disparate worlds, to the townspeople struggling to redefine their personal and community identities, the reader becomes deeply involved with one and all. I found myself rooting not only for the Fugees, but for the slightly behind the times Mayor of Clarkston, and the entire town, because they epitomize the future of the United States and I want it to work. I think every American should read this book and decide to change with the times rather than to opt out of dealing with the times as they are destined to be.

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LibraryThing member reannon

What a splendid book! My book club read it, and it makes a great companion to a book we read a few months ago, Three Cups of Tea. They are entirely different stories, but share teaching what is happening in other parts of the world and in being uplifting stories of what people are doing to create

positive change.

It is the story of Luma Mufleh, who was born and grew up in a loving family in Jordan, yet a family that expected Luma to follow tradition. After coming to the United States to attend college, she did not return to Jordan, knowing that she could not be a part of the traditions. She wound up in metro Atlanta, Georgia, and while driving through Clarkston, a suburb, she saw a group of refugee boys playing soccer. She had been a soccer coach and became the coach to the refugee boys.

Besides telling Luma's story, St. John tells the stories of many of the refugee families: the horrors from which they fled, and the painful adjustments to living in Clarkston, usually living in poverty in a high-crime area in a totally new culture. The author also tells the story of the older inhabitants of Clarkston, who saw their typical small Southern town change drastically with the influx of refugees from all over the world.

Luma, with little compensation, became coach to three different boys' soccer teams, the Under 17s, the Under 15s, and the Under 13s. The teams took the name Fugees, short for refugees. Each had its unique challenges and strengths.

Sports is not, generally, a subject I care about at all, which I blame on growing up in Alabama when Bear Bryant was God. And yet I thorougly enjoyed this book and its stories of people living with great challenges but making something strong and courageous out of them.

Highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member dele2451

An inspiring account of 3 teen soccer teams comprised solely of refugees who come together in a small town in Southern Georgia. The author, Warren St John, does an admirable job of relaying the various obstacles that face these teenagers and their families when they immigrate to the US, as well as

providing broad backgrounds about the history of violence and dislocation that caused their immigration in the first place.
My favorite parts of the story included the segments that illustrate how the game (and the Fugee's unlikely female coach) enable these new arrivals to peacefully co-exist -- both on the field and off -- even when these players originated from countries/religious groups that battled each other in the past. Another plus is St John's description of how the different town residents and organizations have adapted to the rapid change in their regional demographics. Being an advance reading copy/draft, the narrative is understandably rough, but the organization of the account is smooth and cohesive. Final editing will likely smooth over the minor rough spots.
One area I think could use some additional scrutiny is the repetition of the details used to personalize the story (e.g., I didn't need to read about Luma's Smith baseball cap quite so many times), but otherwise it is an enjoyable and thought provoking story that I expect will have broad appeal to a wide international audience including relief/aid workers, immigrants, politicians, soccer fans, sociologists, social workers, politicians, urban planners, clergy and assorted others.

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LibraryThing member leadmomma

Regardless if you love soccer (or even really understand the game fully) you will enjoy this book. The book follows a youth soccer league made up of resettled refugees in Georgia, but it's really not that simple. Yes, you will learn a lot about soccer -- but you become aware of much more than that.

How a small white, Southern town deals with an influx of refugees from conflict zones from around the world. What life was like in the war zones, refugee camps and other places people traveled through before resettlement. You also come to understand that once they arrive in the United States, refugees face a whole new group of challenges.
This book as much about the people themselves rather than the game they play. Your eyes and your heart will be opened having read this book.

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LibraryThing member lesliecp

I plan to purchase several copies of Outcasts United by Warren St. John so I can pass them on to others. It's that good.

Clarkston, Georgia was a typical small American town until it became a resettlement site for thousands of the world's refugees. The book describes how one woman created a soccer

program for children from the war zones of the world. It also explores how community members reacted to their changing reality, some with creativity and compassion, others with suspicion and fear. The stories of the refugee families and how they came to call a small American town, "home," are both moving and inspiring.

In this time of change for our country and indeed, much of the world, this book offers a challenge to embrace a new kind of "normal." I was inspired to seek out and volunteer in a local refugee agency after reading this book.

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LibraryThing member whitreidtan

Wow! This was an amazing book. St. John followed a season with the Fugees soccer teams in Clarkston, Georgia. What makes the Fugees teams different from the usual kid soccer teams elsewhere in suburban Atlanta and around the country is that all the kids on the teams are refugees from war torn

nations around the world who have been relocated to southern Clarkston. St. John focuses not only on the kids, roughly middle school aged, but on their families, histories, their unique coach, and on the rapidly changing face of the town of Clarkston. He weaves all of this together seamlessly, presenting a compelling story of the difficulties the refugees present to a town mired in its sleepy past, the escape that a seriously underfunded and ignored soccer program can offer to children who have seen and survived the worst that fellow human beings have to offer, and how the two things can come together: in conflict or in harmony. The personal histories here are completely horrific and engrossing. Coach Luma is inspiring. And the road blocks thrown up by the town for no good reason are infuriating. But St. John doesn't present shy away from the troubles that have visited the town with the huge influx of refugees. And he doesn't portray Mufleh, the female Jordanian coach volunteering her time, as without flaws. He tries to be fairly balanced, detailing ways in which the town has adapted and grown and made the advent of so many international peoples a positive one even as he highlights short-sightedness on the part of others in town. A definite challenge, one that was well done and kept me reading long past when the light should have been turned off, I would recommend this to anyone interested in narrative non-fiction.

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LibraryThing member pioneercynthia

For me, a successful book is one that makes you want to do something. Maybe that something is read another book by the author, or learn more about the subject matter. In the case of Outcasts United, it makes me want to be more involved in my community. I really enjoyed this book, with its vivid

cast of characters and underdog mentality. I found myself rooting for the refugee kids and their incredible coach both on the field and off.

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LibraryThing member jhhymas

This is the book everyone needs to read! The current inflow of refugees from the many troubled parts of the world, and the decision to put them into fading neighborhoods bunched up together, deny them the support systems that have been available to refugees in some other times. Although I imagine

that flood of immigration (Irish, Italians, Jews) in earlier times had some of the same sorts of difficulties. But now, the immigrants are apt to be much more traumatized (think Rwanda, the Lost Boys of Sudan, etc.) and the neighborhoods, with their churning mobility and working moms don't offer the same clearcut mores to adopt.
This is the fascinating story of what happened when a young woman emigre from Jordan remained in America against her family's wishes and wound up coaching several age-defined soccer teams. There were tutoring and homework practice as well as running and other exercises. She had to fight the distrust and opposition of the local authorities as well.
Such is the quality of her personhood that she has transformed life for many of the boys she worked with and made a huge difference (although not a fairytale one) in her community.
Written with love and understanding by a reporter who followed the story and interviewed many of the participants. The details and quotations are beautifully selected/ The book is written with an economy that tells you enough, but leaves you wanting more. Get it, read it, live it!

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LibraryThing member nobooksnolife

…"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
(from "The New Colosus" by Emma Lazarus, written in 1883; engraved on a bronze plaque and

mounted inside the Statue of Liberty, 1903.)

Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town, is the compelling story of a diverse hodge-podge of some of the world's most "tired, poor, tempest-tost" youngsters ever to start new lives in the United States. Relocated from their violence-ruined homelands to a small, quiet suburb of Atlanta, the self-named "Fugees" find unexpected succor in the discipline and dedication of soccer training and competition.

Before reading it, I was a little afraid that Outcasts United would be another namby-pamby story of misfits who find society's recognition and peers' appreciation by their performance as a sports team, a là Disney. I am so glad to be wrong!

Author Warren St. John weaves the complicated stories of the refugees, their families, their phenomenal coach, and the town of Clarkston, Georgia into a compelling and thought-provoking narrative. Skillfully backtracking from present day problems of adaptation and assimilation, we are given the harrowing personal stories of the team members and their families.

Almost every boy is a survivor of tribal warfare or outright genocide. Their stories are similar to the horrifying accounts in Daoud Hari's The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur and Alphonsion Deng's They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan and Dave Eggers's What is the What. In Outcasts, the author's journalistic style assembles some very powerful synopses of modern African history and current events. For me, this was one of the most useful and informative parts of the book.

There would have been no Fugees team, and likely no organized soccer at all for the refugees, were it not for the trajectory that brought their incredible coach from Jordan, via Smith College—a woman of Muslim heritage and western education who was determined to create an independent life. Her personal story could be a book in itself. Her dedication and tough love approach to coaching, her perseverance and hard work, her intelligence and humanity, show us that real heroism is made more of hard work than anything else.

Recommended heartily to all readers, but especially to educators and community leaders.

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LibraryThing member readingrat

This book delves into the personal histories of a youth soccer team located in Clarkston, GA, which is comprised of a ethnically diverse group of boys recently resettled in the U.S. The author not only explains each family's personal journey to the U.S. and the problems they had making a new life

here, but he also covers the historical events that led up to each particular war or uprising that forced each family away from their homeland.

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LibraryThing member benruth

This book follows the Fugees, several teams of refugees in Georgia who are all coached by the same tireless woman. Those who are wary of sports-related nonfiction for fear of its containing endless blow-by-blow accounts of games in which the reader isn't necessarily interested have nothing to fear

from this book---while it does describe some of the games, it is far more concerned with describing the people and their lives. While events fail to follow the neat story arc that the author might have liked to construct, the book is nonetheless continuously compelling; it's a feel-good story, to be sure, but it has some earnest truths to tell.

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LibraryThing member kathmuse

I am a sucker for a refugee story. Given the dearth of immigrants now pouring in from War Zones throughout the world, I unfortunately have a lot to read. The story concerns a soccer team in a sleepy Southern town outside of Atlanta comprised of refugees from countries throughout the Middle East,

Africa, and the Balkans. It focuses primarily on the coach, an immigrant herself who refused to return to the traditional values of her wealthy Jordanian family, which I found interesting to a point. fI'd like to know more about the kids themselves, but it is still a story worth telling as well as reading.

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LibraryThing member redwoodhs

This the heart-felt story of one determined woman from Jordan who ended up coaching soccer teams made up of recent immigrant boys in small town in Georgia.
It would be suitable for reading by high-school-age students who want to learn more about the way refugees and those of other races and

religions are treated by main-stream Americans.
Against all odds, Luma Mufleh leaves her very traditional Jordanian family and travels to the U.S. to pursue a college education. After kicking around a bit, Luma ends up in Atlanta because "she liked the weather."
Having loved soccer in college she got a job coaching girl's team but her methods, which were very strict, didn't endear her to the parents of the upper-middle-class girls she was coaching.
Eventually she ended up in Clarkston, a quintessential Southern white suburb of Atlanta.
Little did the folks of Clarkston know what would transpire when several refugee agencies decided their town was perfect for resettling refugees from across the world because of a surplus of cheap housing units.
The rest of the story relates Luma's struggles with coaching the Fugees' teams (Under-13s, Under-15s, and Under-17s), dealing with their attraction the American drug and gang culture, their own lack of discipline, school struggles, etc.
Luma never gives up on the Fugees although there are times when she comes close.
In the end there is no resolution of the various conflicts with the town but there is certainly a feeling that this is a struggle which we as Americans need to face up to and resolve.

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LibraryThing member dmcco01

I enjoyed "Outcasts United," but I felt as if it were incomplete. Since this was a proof, the afterward wasn't included. I think that would've helped. But I also wish we had gotten to know the characters better. I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. Maybe I was just hoping for the

thrilling victory at the end that didn't happen.

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LibraryThing member whitewavedarling

This is a touching book, and one worth reading, but which should also be approached for what it is: an at length news account that, in all honesty, often reads more like a newspaper than a book you'd pick up to read in a few sittings. That said, I read this in a few sittings, and you may also. The

author has to be given credit for knowing that the power of his story would come with the individuals bound up in the story, and with the events, not with any overly dramatic writing or suspense. Even for me, a person who knows little of sports in general and Nothing of soccer (until reading this book), the book was powerful, easy to follow, and worthwhile.

It gives an in depth and honest look at the refugee situation in one portion of America, that is certainly true to other communities dealing with many of the same issues. The attention to interaction in the community, faults, failures, and successes, along with the individuals who had a stake in all of the events, makes the book come together into a solid readable history of a soccer team of refugees from too many different countries to list here. Throughout the book, the account is straightforward, and St. John does a good job of centering in on a few particular characters to recenter on as the book moves---this might not be necessary for the story to get told, but it is necessary to hold the book together as more than a long news story. My only complaints are minor, really. First, I'd like a few pictures. That may sound silly or unnecessary considering the descriptions of the characters and community, but considering the nature of St. John's project, I think even a few pictures would have helped this really strike readers as a memorable book worth passing on repeatedly. My second criticism is the ending. I understand that the epilogue was written as late as possible to contain as much as possible, and so wasn't included in Advanced Reader Editions, but even so, with or without the epilogue, the ending is incredibly jarring. Even a few more sentences before his dramatic wrap-up would have done wonders for the way I felt upon exiting the book. That's to do with his style though, not the story.

In general, I'd recommend this for anyone interested or involved in youth sports, soccer, diversity, or the situation of refugees in America. It's readable, powerful, and worthwhile if you have any interest that brings you the way of this book. I also think it would be really worthwhile for kids to read, though I'm still pondering what age group I'd set it toward--perhaps not until ninth or tenth grade. It's a powerful book, though, and one which gives a beautiful look into what America can be, and sometimes is, along with the shortcomings that make that vision sometimes difficult to approach. In the end? I recommend this book.

If you did get this book in advanced reader form, though, take the time to look up the epilogue on the random house website--there's also a link posted in the early reviewers group under the Outcasts United thread.

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