Outcast United

Warren St. John’s ‘Outcasts United” is a story consisting of the difficult yet moving journey of Luma Mufleh. Luma was born in Amman, Jordan, and was full of brightness and potential. However, the environment of Amman was poor and didn’t provide enough education to create a successful future. Because her wealthy father, Hassan, had very high hopes of his daughter, him and his wife Sawsan decided to send her to the United Sates for college. After experiencing the amazing opportunities and freedom offered in the U.S, Luma decided to stay there, even if that meant being permanently cut off from her loving Jordanian family and the wealth that came along with them.

Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.

In the novel “Inside Out and Back Again” by Thanha Lai, the universal refugee experience is expressed through the title, and Ha’s individual experience of fleeing and finding home. This essay will show the hardships of turning inside out and how hard it is coming back again. In “Inside Out and Back Again” an independent, determined girl named Ha flees her home in Vietnam because of war and poverty. Ha and her family flee to Alabama to start a better life. In Alabama, Ha faces challenges such as bullying, and racism that make her stronger to come back again.

In Warren St. John’s Outcasts United, the citizens of Clarkston, Georgia had a fantasy of living in the ideal American town. However, that fantasy stood no chance when faced with the harsh reality of life. When a myriad of refugees from war-torn countries were placed in Clarkston, the townspeople saw their fantasy begin to slip away. Clarkston’s residents disliked the influx of refugees because they feared the thought of losing their ideal American town. The citizens were too selfish to live in such a state of liminality as depicted by St. John. Rather than helping their neighbors, the “old” Clarkston residents maintained their ideology by isolating the refugees and making it nearly impossible for the refugees to survive or have a desirable life in Clarkston. The Clarkston residents were driven by fear of the unknown and were reluctant to accept the refugees. Luma started a youth soccer program, which was aimed toward the refugee children to help the younger generation of refugees fit into the American society and lessen the tensions between the Clarkston residents and the refugees that was evident in her generation of refugees. The Clarkston residents had to accept and become a part of the inevitable change in their community.

The U.S is seen as a safe haven for many refugees and immigrants around the world and that those who have made it are the “lucky ones” however, Author Aimee Phan discusses this common misconception in her novel We Should Never Meet. We Should Never Meet is a collection of short stories about how the Vietnamese War has effected its citizens still living in Vietnam or who fled to the United States in search of a safer home. In one short story, Emancipation, Phan gives readers a look into the life of Mai, a Vietnamese girl who was smuggled to America at the age of five. While the story is told by Mai in first person she is used more as median to show the differences in lives between her four friends Tiffany and Haun,

Outcasts United by Warren St. John is a wonderful book about a community of refugees who live in Clarkston, Georgia and their struggles to adapt with foreign environment of the United States. The book tells the stories of refugees that come from different background and countries in which they are connected together by an American- educated Jordanian woman called Luma Mufleh. Despite their difficulties in establishing new identity, they found their passion in soccer and with Luma Mufleh as their coach they create a soccer team called Fugees. In the early chapters of the book, it illustrates the difficulties to make a group of kids from different background unite and work together

Clarkston, Georgia is a small town on the outskirts of Atlanta, home to many refugees from around the world. These refugees all migrated to Clarkston for many different reasons including war and diseases. For about the last twenty years Clarkston’s refugees have expanded to roughly one third of its population. This migration has caused many cultural differences as well as struggling businesses and racial discrimination. Author Warren Saint John discusses many challenges due to this migration through the Fugees, a soccer team of refugee boys. Outcasts United is a story showing that in order for a community of very different cultures to coexist there must be acceptance and compromises made by both the natives and the refugees so that they can all live in peace.

“Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.” ― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose. Outcasts United, by Warren St. John, follows the stories of war-torn refugees that found themselves in the small town community of Clarkston. Tensions were high as the wave of new culture clashed with the status quo of “Old Clarkston” residents. However, in light of the unstable situation, a group of young boys were able to find their home on the soccer field. The human need for belonging is explored in this book. However, refugees have an extremely difficult journey to acceptance due to the isolating tendencies that resettlement can cause.

In today’s society, many people do not think about the outcome that immigration can lead to. It has been noticed that immigration into the United States is increasing more rapidly than ever. Recently, talk of allowing a large number of refugees to travel to the United States has surfaced in the media and has proven to be an extremely controversial topic. When it comes to refugees, many complications arise and some of these complications can be depicted in towns such as Clarkston, Georgia. In the novel Outcasts United, author, Warren St. John gravitates toward the expression of the idea of refugees and the struggles they encounter when coming to America.

Have you ever felt as if you were alone? Do you feel as if you were separated from everyone else, such as society? Everyone has faced these issues at several points in their lives. It is what makes us human beings. There are a wide variety of factors to take into account when figuring out why people seem to feel so marginalized or alienated. A group that is constantly feeling marginalized are people who have immigrated from another country. Feeling afraid when entering a foreign area is always a difficult experience. The dilemma of not feeling welcomed by those who already inhabit the place is a struggle too. The biggest decision immigrants face is whether or not to conform/assimilate to the new culture that they are being exposed to. Sometimes authors who have faced these issues try to incorporate them into their pieces of work. Two authors are Cynthia Ozick and Henry Roth, both of whom have touched upon the “Jewish American Experience.” Ozick created characters who have handled the events from The Shawl in different ways throughout Rosa. Henry Roth incorporates his childhood experiences and inner thoughts in Call It Sleep through the eyes of the main character.

Jeanne experienced internal conflict following her release from Manzanar. She begins to feel the conflict of being both Japanese and American. Being in Manzanar helped Jeanne see her fellow Japanese differently than ever before. However, being isolated from her American’s she still hasn’t resolved her confusion in identifying as a Japanese American. After she leaves Manzanar, the shock of ethnic prejudice compels her to try to reclaim her American identity by fitting in, but her continual attempts to conform to white America’s definition of social achievement lead her to neglect the Japanese side of herself. The distance she puts between herself and her Japanese ancestry mirrors the unhealthy isolation from American culture that she experiences

The daily life of a refugee can be a drastic battle. Having been ripped from their world by violence and chaos, refugees find themselves lost in a completely different world. To clearly observe such a struggle, look no further than Clarkston, Georgia, and the works of author Warren St. John. In John’s novel Outcasts United, the challenges of refugees in Clarkston are documented and seen in many ways, including discrimination and bias from other races and cultures, inadequate English education in the past and present, and the desire to belong in a world they’re not sure they fit into.

The bond that connects them to one another also places the Joads into a large community. This experience of organized unification is exemplified when the Joad family begins to travel with the Wilsons and at the Weedpatch government camp. These communities allowed migrants to maintain their dignity as well as to express their growing anger. As these communities begin to encounter unwelcome social and economic realities together, “twenty families be[come] one family” and the “loss of home be[comes] one loss.” This large family of displaced farmers become “the only ones that’ll help” in times of “trouble or hurt or need.”

Although, even with their efforts to push away from their own history that they have created, a lot of times American immigrants discovered themselves simply gazing into the deep past, David now glances at his disappearing reflection in the blackening window. This darkened past is that of a country in which personalities are lost and rejected, misplaced as immigrants have migrated from their homelands to start a new life, and rejected as the rumble of the majority hushes the voice of the minority. Yet individualities are also created as these new Americans try to carve a space for themselves through self-invention, a notion that would become a stamp of their new country. The growl of the American majority is replied by the voice of Baldwin, a black and gay man, truly exemplifies the pain of the minority to comprehend itself and find its place.

The arrival of immigrants into developed nations has been a common trend for centuries, but so has the wave of resentment from natives of the land towards those who are migrants. Adichie illustries this migrant struggle through Americanah, which explores the hardships migrants must face with trying to be accepted into the new society. With her portrayal of the immigrant tendency to assimilate, Adichie skillfully highlights the pain associated with losing essential parts of one’s true identity.