Customer Reviews

Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town

5 star:		(70)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As someone who once worked for a company where I had colleagues who were refugees of war-torn countries, this book was personally relevant. Just as in the book, I was told the most astounding and frightening tales of what people did to survive on a day-to-day basis and how they were ultimately forced to flee their homes for fear of their own lives and those of their families. It really made me think of how lucky I have always been to have never had to face anything remotely like what they'd gone through. I had the same feeling when I read this book and St. John delved into the stories of the Fugees players and what they had gone through before reaching the U.S.

Perhaps the saddest part of this book is the reality that greets these people when they reach the U.S. It was sobering to read about how they were settled in apartment complexes where they lived next door to drug dealers and gang members. It was sad to think that these people had escaped the devastation of their homes only to end up in a totally foreign culture in which they'd face a lot of the same dangers. 1

It was also disturbing to read about their treatment at the hands of the police and the long-time residents of the town. I don't think St. John was trying to paint these people out to be evil. Rather, he showed how human fears of that which is different and misunderstood can really tear at the fabric of a society. These people struggle with trying to find a way to deal with the influx of refugees into their town. Sometimes their solutions are brilliant, such as the story of the local grocery store, and sometimes they are just wrong, such as the Fugees inability to find a decent soccer field near their homes.

I was really struck by Luma, their coach, and how much she sacrificed in order to run her three soccer teams. The dedication of people like her and some of the other volunteers described in the book is really something to contemplate. She gave a lot of herself not only to get the team running but also to do what she could to ensure that her boys stayed in school and out of trouble. Her teams pretty much became her entire life rather than just a pastime. It's hard not to marvel at how heroic someone like this is because it makes the reader question if s/he would be as dedicated.

This book is a really important read. The face of the U.S. is definitely in a state of transition. This is and has always been a nation of immigrants but this book is timely when placed in the context of the arguments about illegal immigration that took place during the Bush administration. The big question, really, seems to be about immigration in general, both legal and illegal. In order to really make our country work, we have to find a way to live with our neighbors and to respect their customs. Even if you're not a fan of soccer (as in my case), this is still a book that will fascinate, amaze, and horrify you. What's more, you'll walk away with it with some new and valuable ways of looking at the U.S.

How does a soccer coach find a practice field for her team? Google Earth.

But why, in a town that's not short of parks, is she looking for a field on Google Earth?

Because the mayor keeps issuing what seem like illegal orders to deny her team access to any of the lush local fields.

And why would he do that?

Because this is Clarkston, Georgia, a town of 7,200 a dozen miles from Atlanta. And the members of the soccer team are not only boys of color, they are foreigners --- Africans, mostly --- who have come to Clarkston as part of a wave of immigrants.

'Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town'is set in the feel-bad reality of a small town that never wanted to be the dumping ground for people fleeing conflict zones. It's a story of bumbling villains --- the mayor is a decent soul who's way over his head; the bad cop is the sort of jerk you can find anywhere --- and unlikely heroes. The first heroes are, of course, the Fugees, who overcome terrible memories, language barriers and unthinking prejudice to become --- against great odds --- a team. But at the top of the list is the team's coach: Luma Mufleh, who is, in her own way, also a refugee.

The boys are really the lesser story, because without the commitment and self-sacrifice of this exceptional coach, their team would never have lasted a year. So weep for their pasts. Cheer for their success. Worry about their futures. But reserve the standing ovation for Luma Mufleh. Born into privilege in Jordan, she graduated from Smith College and decided to stay in the United States. Her father's response was to cut her off. "No more money, no more phone calls. He was finished with his daughter."

So the Smith graduate got work cleaning toilets and washing dishes. She moved to Georgia for the weather. One day she drove to Clarkston and saw refugee kids playing a style of soccer she knew and liked. She went to the YMCA, discovered a coaching job was available, and was hired to run a girls' team. Just one accident after another.....

Mufleh did not coddle her players. She expected discipline and compliance, and when she didn't get it, the kids paid they price. Her girls ran a lot --- but if they were late, they ran extra laps. And woe be to the player who complained to her parents.

The boys were even more challenging, if only because they represented more of a threat to the town. They weren't. They were just poor, often hungry, not really ready to assimilate. Mufleh worked 60 hours a week coaching them, helping their families, making sure they got their school work done. Exhausting? "You start off on your own," she says, "and you suddenly have a family of a hundred and twenty."

St. John draws the boys as well as he can, but their stories do merge. You think nothing that happens to them in Clarkston can be half as dramatic as the events that brought them to America --- imagine being a kid in Liberia and running out of your house as your father is being killed inside. Well, imagine, in America, seeing your coach arrested, handcuffed, and carted off to jail --- as you're going to a game! [Mufleh's crime? A burned-out tail light.]

The soccer style of the Fugees is exciting, and St. John's descriptions of their games are crisp and tense. But their victories on the field are small compared to what their coach accomplished in practice and in her pre-game talks. Luma Mufleh deserved the front page Times story. She earned --- many times over --- the money that flows to the team from the sale of the film rights. And she's more than worthy of this 300-page Valentine.

Warren St. John tells the incredible stories of an entire program of immigrant soccer players in Clarkston, GA. The incredible part is how these players ("The Fugees") arrived in this Southern town. The players are all refugees from various countries. Each player's family has an amazing survival story from war-torn and politically oppressed areas of the planet. That the team consists of Liberians, Somalis, Sudanese, Kosovars, Iraqis, and other nationalities makes no difference to the players - they just want to play.

Also incredible is the dedication of the coach, Luma Mufleh, an American-educated woman from Jordan, who coaches the three soccer teams of Under 13's, Under 15's, and Under 17's. Her story is one of selflessness and dedication to the families of these former refugees. She takes them to the doctor. She buys them groceries. She picks them up to go to movies. But, she coaches soccer as if SOCCER is the true meaning of life: playing hard and with sportsmanship gives the players the skills they need to survive in their new world, she believes.

Nothing comes easy for the team or coach. They have no place to call a 'home' field. They practice on the dirt with no soccer goals. They have no uniforms and many have no soccer cleats. Families have no cars. Parents (and many times the single parent) work an hour away by bus at night leaving players to take care of dinner and younger siblings.

The people The Fugees meet along the way also shows the struggles and surprises that new immigrants encounter upon arriving in America. We can all learn from this book as America itself changes. You'll find yourself wanting this team to succeed and being very proud of its accomplishments in the face of so many adversities.

The way Warren St. John intermixes the personal stories with the team and coach stories makes it very clear why the movie rights for this story resulted in a bidding war among the studios.

Five stars - and more. Get it if you love sports or soccer. Insist that your friends get it if you love them, too!

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.

Since I tend to read most books about soccer that I happen to hear about, this much buzzed-about book eventually made it to the top of my pile. Even then I shied away from it for a while, since I'm leery of books that are described as "inspirational." Nonetheless, I eventually cracked the spine, and discovered that it's that rare breed of book that's both fascinating and frustrating. Fascinating because it actually is kind of inspirational and will open the reader's eye to the daunting financial and social issues faced by refugees in the United States. Frustrating because it is neither well constructed nor well written.

The book revolves around the determined efforts of a young Jordanian immigrant woman to build a youth soccer club in a small town about fifteen miles outside of Atlanta. The twist is that her club is comprised of kids (or rather, boys) from the town's large refugee population of Liberians, Albanians, Afghans, etc. This allows the author to explore the many financial and social problems refugees face in trying to resettle in the United States, as well as the interesting effects of such demographic change in some of the areas where aid agencies place them. St. John does a reasonably good journalistic job of tracing the woman's backstory and detailing her efforts to establish the club, and the various administrative and cultural roadblocks she had to overcome.

This story originally appeared as a series of articles in the New York Times, and I'm guessing it was actually better in that shorter format. Here, the clunky writing becomes glaringly obvious, as does his inability to write well about the game of soccer. The book has more redundancies and restatements of information than any I can recall reading in the last several years -- both in the general narrative, but especially when he tries to write about the boys' games. The overall effect is rather like a mediocre high school paper, in which the student is trying desperately to pad his material to meet a ten-page requirement by saying the same thing over and over with only minor variations in word choice.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of compelling material -- especially the struggle to find a field to play on, the various bureaucratic roadblocks thrown up by xenophobic "old-timers," and the fragile psyches of the boys themselves. Unfortunately, these are undermined by the book's significant narrative problems, as the author skips around quite a bit, diving in and out of the lives of his subjects, never settling long enough on any one to provide any focus. Even his ostensible protagonist, the coach, is left fairly unexplored and unchallenged. Overall, I guess it's worth checking out if you're interested in either refugee issues, immigration, or soccer -- just don't come to it with huge expectations.

Outcasts United is no grab-and-go literary fix for the sports thriller enthusiast. This complex and engaging tale of young African refugees from multiple different nations, and widely varying cultures, being welded into functioning soccer teams (the Fugees) by a Jordanian immigrant woman, is about far more than striving for victory on a field of grass. Junkies of David vs. Goliath sports thrillers are hereby given fair warning: Outcasts United is not sports candy. It is a sophisticated and deeply engaging tale about geopolitics, the fear we have of those not like ourselves, and of heroes with clay feet. It's about nightmares in North and West Africa and unrealized dreams in the United States. Outcasts United is a story about a community confronted by human need, and about which members of the community step forward, which step back, and which observe silently from the sidelines.

Outcasts United is a book for both the mind and the heart. If you're human, reading Outcasts United will give a few tugs on your heart strings, but your left brain will also get a good solid workout as you turn the pages crafted by author Warren St. John. The quality of St. John`s research, and the questions that he poses, give the reader so much more than a simple sports story that is wolfed down and then forgotten. St. John's ability to tell a story with exquisite attention to the facts allows the reader the unusual freedom of drawing their own conclusions, rather than beating them over the head with a biased editorial harangue. His skill and dedication to his subject call to mind Anne Fadiman's excellent book, also about a small town absorbing a sudden and large influx of refugees, The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down.

Whether you are a solitary reader that likes a book with enough depth to cause contemplation, or a book club member whose group loves both good writing and a vibrant discussion, move Outcasts United way up high on your "must read" list.

I have been graced with personal knowlege of Coach Luma and the Fugee family but no one can tell the story like Warren St. John. It is evident that this team has scored his heart, as it did mine. His writing is genuine, colorful, didactic and one of the quickest books I have ever read, since I found it near impossible to put down.

There are elements that make me want to require every coach, every parent, and every soccer player take the time to reflect on the message of the Fugees. Warren has captured their essence and even though I thought he could not enthrall me any more than in his NYTimes article I find there are new insights and stories that caused me to laugh and cry anew.

It is a true tale of the spirit and the fact that there is always hope, always repentance, and always the presence of a spirit that brings humanity together to tell a story that will lift your heart.

If you like first rate journalism, the kind where reporting integrity, style and skill are more important to you than is the topic, this book is for you. If you already like football, so much the better. Mr. St. John is a trained and experienced reporter by way of Columbia and the New York Times.

What is more, he is a beautiful stylist. He writes like a cloudy day (not a rainy one) where the complete lack of harsh glare lets you see more clearly, where the colors are rich and saturated. His last book, "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer" was about his following those peculiar Alabama football fans who in turn follow their team on every away game in their RVs. It was well written and a bunch of fun. This new book finds his writing skills taken to the next level. Rising to the occasion of a more formidable subject, he is vivid, thorough and nimble. I got to only the fifth page of the introduction and he had me choked-up already. By page seven again he had my eyes watering for crying out loud, so to speak.

Mr. St. John tells us the stories (there are many) of an extraordinary coach and her players as they came from all parts of this troubled world to meet in a little town thirteen miles from Atlanta. The place has changed from a sleepy town to a pressure cooker of a sociology lab as the government designates it as a major refugee relocation center without providing the residents with any help of their own. Little boys and their families are shipwrecked by a dozen political storms doing their damage on the world. None is from a natural disaster; these are hand made horrors of man.

Soccer slowly emerges as a creaking, rocky salvation of sorts for the teams (there are three by age group) but not for the bewildered town. True to form, Mr. St. John moved down to Atlanta, the same way he bought a beater RV to follow the migrant fans in his last book. This is how journalism ought to be done. No mercenary, no axe to grind, no hidden mission. He finds all the angles, all the facets and gives each its due.

Coach Luma is fascinating. She is no crusading true believer, no selfless firebrand. She is making her own way when she finds the refugees and takes them on. She is pragmatic, not saintly, but with that tang of honesty. She has grit gained by experience that informs her principles. She is just what the lost boys need in a coach. She disciplines them, runs them hard and inspires them. They do not even have goals on their playing field. "It is like playing basketball with no hoops." Her worst rebuke to her players is to tell them they are getting lazy, and starting to play like THEM. Her difficulties with the YMCA would curl the toes of The Village People.

Mr. St. John is at the top of his game reporting the play of their games. If you do not understand football, these passages are illuminating. His book is rich and complex. Sport is just the broth of his soup. All the rest makes it a feast.

I kind of expected Outcasts United to be a story of a team battling diversity in some no-name town, and that held true, but it's more than just that.

The Fugees are an aptly-named soccer team (three teams actually, of various age groups) comprised of refugees from around the world, and they're coached by Luma Mufleh, a stern-but-fair woman from Jordan. They play soccer in a town most people have likely never heard of - Clarkston, Georgia - a town an hour or so outside of Atlanta. But the Clarkston community didn't really appreciate the refugee families changing the town's culture and there was a lot of adversity and unfairness.

Warren St. John presents a background of refugee families that is well-researched and he also details the changes that occur within the town's culture, such as grocery stores and churches. Amidst it all are day-to-day activities surrounding The Fugees and their lives with soccer. It's relatively easy, interesting reading, almost like a small-town newspaper column in book form. Outcasts United is all of inspiring, depressing, and touching, and soccer is the glue that holds everything together.

Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town

by Warren St. John (2009)

Warren St. John is a reporter for the New York Times who wrote for this newspaper a series of articles about the sometime mysterious ways that America welcomes immigrants into our country. He used these articles to write this book about hope and the unifying force of sports.

What a surprise to learn that our government settles families fleeing war zones from many foreign countries to small and unprepared towns in America. Housing people is such close quarters beside other families that just a short time ago; they were engaged in mortal combat.

I can not help but think...could I have survived moving during the middle of the night to a new country without my spouse where the language was strange, jobs were menial, and I was not welcome?

Again, the sport of soccer gives a young Jordanian woman a purpose when she decides, after receiving her American education, to work with these refugees and assist them in finding a home in this new country.

Her struggle, together with the Clarkston, Georgia refugees show us that people are slow to accept new people into a community. What hoops this woman was made to jump through to give these immigrants a place to learn and play? She is a hero in my book.

Because my book was an Advance Reading Copy, you were required to visit the website [...] to read the epilogue.

I highly recommend this book; it is a reminder that we as a nation can do better in our treatment of newcomers to our country.