“There he was with his immigration face
Giving me a paper chase
But the sun was coming
Cos all at once he looked into my space
And stamped a number over my face
And he sent me running” -- Graham Nash/David Crosby, “Immigration Man”
“Before tryouts began, the boys seemed puzzled. Where, they wondered, was the coach? Luma was right in front of them, but a woman soccer coach was a strange sight to young Africans, and to the young Muslim boys from Afghanistan and Iraq. During a shooting drill, Luma was teaching the boys how to strike the ball with the tops of their feet when she overheard a Sudanese boy talking to the others. “’She’s a girl,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’
“Luma ordered him to stand in goal. She took off her shoes as the boy waited beneath the crossbar, rocking back and forth and growing more anxious by the moment. She asked for a ball, which she placed on the grass. Then, barefoot, as the team looked on, she blasted a shot directly at the boy, who dove out of the way as the ball rocketed into the net. Luma turned toward her team. ‘Anybody else?’ she asked.”
Jordanian-born Luma Mufleh was educated at the elite American Community School in Amman before traveling to the United States for a higher education and graduating from Smith College. Believing that a permanent life in the U.S. offered her far more possibilities that the second-class citizenship provided to women in her native land – where the civil code is based on patriarchal Islamic law – Luma defied her parents and stayed in America.
Having thus been disowned, Luma was living near Atlanta, struggling with a failing eatery, and coaching a girls’ soccer team when she happened upon nearby Clarkston, a town that has been transformed over two decades by an influx of refugees from war zones around the world. Happening upon an international cast of young men playing soccer in an apartment complex there in Clarkston, Luma was inspired to start and coach a soccer program for them.
In OUTCASTS UNITED, an adaptation of his adult book about the Fugee team “family,” New York Times reporter Warren St. John moves back and forth between the individual family stories of the young immigrants who make up the Fugees soccer teams (three different age groups), and the chronicling of their coming together under Coach Luma Mufleh.
“After the trauma of war and relocation, many refugee kids had severe problems. Luma had to keep this in mind. She had learned from experience that she needed about a third of her players to be well-adjusted kids from stable families. They would set an example for the others. Another third of the team would be boys who were for the most part dependable even if they had a few problems at school or with other kids. The last third would be kids with real problems and unstable families. These were the boys who would require most of Luma’s energy and who would most likely cause fighting on the teams. They were also the boys who needed the Fugees the most.”
As we learn from the harrowing true stories in OUTCASTS UNITED, there are still plenty of people coming to America for the same reasons that so many of our ancestors landed here during past generations. And, as we come to see, Luma Mufleh is a bona fide American hero for the work she has done in Clarkston to change these young lives for the better.
Recommended by: Richie Partington, MLIS, Librarian, California USA 978-0-385-74194-1 240 pages Ages 10 and up
See more of his recommendations at: Richie's Picks _https://richiespicks.com_ (https://richiespicks.com/)
