Outcasts United Analysis

In “Outcasts United” written by Warren St. John we learn about the lives of multiple young children along with their families coming from broken homes that seek a better living, they are refugee. Throughout the book, the lives of the kids are described on how they learn to adapt to this new life. Luma Mufleh is introduced in the beginning. She is the creator of the “Fugees” a soccer team she started in order to give these boys a way to escape from their past. While learning the way these kids live their life, the theme that is portrayed to us would be teamwork.

“Who would pretend that a history of a migration has immunized the United States against bigotry?” In Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, Scott Russel Sanders uses this rhetorical question to convince his readers to think more logistically about migration. He pries open the eyes of Americans and shows them the damage that moving can cause, as opposed to Salaman Rushdie’s thoughts that it was only positive.

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.

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.

“Refugees are part of humanity and we can’t leave them behind.” Ger Duany, Actor. If we have the ability and the power to help people we have to help. We can’t just shut the door on them. According to Warren St. John in Outcasts United, the town of Clarkston, Georgia, was chosen as a refugee resettlement site for several reasons, including access to affordable housing, affordable public transportation, and availability of low-skill jobs.

In Warren St. John’s Outcasts United, the reader witnesses the struggles Luma Mufleh faces as she tries to get a suitable soccer field for her soccer teams composed of refugee immigrants from nations ravaged with war and terrorism; the conflicts she faces allows the reader to examine the changes (or lack thereof) that are happening/have happened across the world, even in our own hometowns. Without a doubt, the people of Clarkston are reluctant to accept the change that was beginning to envelope the town and that is the attitude that exemplifies the xenophobia that locks the closed minds of many Americans today. Truly, Luma would have had fewer problems acquiring the field necessary for the team to safely practice had they been a group of white

Clarkston, Atlanta has gone through major change in the past decade. They have had a massive influx of refugees from all around the world. With this change comes the question of will Clarkston be able to adapt and survive this change? Some people of the town adapt better than others. Luma Mufleh helps some of these people get used to their town that is not the same. Some people in Clarkston can not accept that their town is made up of refugees and will refuse to communicate and cooperate. The refugees on Luma’s team and some from around her have taken it upon themselves to “be the bigger man” and try to get along with the people of Clarkston. Clarkston is still trying to make it.

“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.

In a small town outside of metro Atlanta, each year, at least 1,500 refugees settle in the city of Clarkston to start a new beginning at life. Refugees from Bhutan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, and Vietnam come in waves from every corner of the globe. Lately there has been an increasingly number of refugees from the Congo, due to the civil war that has been ongoing for many years. Currently, there is a population of 13,000 individuals who have made Clarkston their home away from home. We ask, what brings the refugees to this little city? Many wonder how this has happened, how Clarkston has developed its own little cultural sense of identity? Refugees started settling in Clarkston back in the early 1990's, and it's been the resettlement hub ever since. The reason so many refugees settled in Clarkston, Georgia is due to the low- income based apartments, easy access to public transit and it’s near the interstate, which can take you to any part of Atlanta.

For the podcast, I interviewed Lina Abdulnoor, with the intention of exploring the intricacies of refugeehood by analyzing Lina’s refugee experience. Lina lived in Iraq with her family until they began receiving death threats due to their religious beliefs. Convinced that they needed to flee the country to survive, they left Iraq as refugees. After leaving Iraq, they settled in Jordan, where they waited two years until the U.N. to approve their request to move to the U.S. in 2012. Lina and her family initially settled in Virginia, where she experienced culture shock as she adapted to American culture and the English language. However, Lina did not feel accepted in Virginia; her experiences in the state led her to think that Americans treated her according to negative stereotypes of Iraqis. After living in Virginia for several months, Lina and her family chose to resettle in San Diego, California, which harbored a larger Iraqi population than Virginia did. Supported by San Diego’s Iraqi community and various refugee organizations, Lina flourished, and she currently studies at UCSD while holding a stable job.

As Outcasts United began to unfold, one can note many values that endorse those of Bethel College, St. John amplifies certain ones. The most prevalent value is diversity, which Bethel proposes they prize individuals for their uniqueness.(Bethel) Which goes is parallel with the entire book Outcasts United. St. John shows us different experiences with diversity, for example, the diversity experienced by the original people of Clarkston is vastly different from what was experienced by Luma and the refugees that were relocated to the town of Clarkston. In chapter three of the novel, St. John states “in the late 1980s, another group of outsiders took note of Clarkston: the nonprofit agencies that resettle the tens of thousands of refugees accepted into the United States each year”. (St. John 35) Some experiences with diversity are more negative than others. After analysing Outcast United one can

(STEWE-2) Meals are regularly provided in modern day Pakistani refugee camps because food is vital for human survival (Constable). Like in Nusrat's school, they provided meals so the students can eat and not suffer from malnutrition. (SIP-B) The author includes a connection to make a literary element by acknowledging that refugee camps have food that they prepare and serve to the refugees.

Immigrants and refugee are often willing to stay in small towns and accept unaccepted but essential jobs. They play vital roles in delivering needed materials, and allow