The heroine of St. John's compelling story is Luma Mufleh, a 31-year-old native of Jordan who graduated from Smith College in 1997 and remained in the U.S. in defiance of her parents. When she signs on as volunteer coach of a team of adolescents and teenagers from countries as diverse as Burundi and Bosnia, it's clear she's found her life's work. She's a tough taskmaster, determined that the young men in her charge will conform to her rigorous training rules. Even as she's imparting savvy soccer coaching, she makes sure the boys receive extra tutoring, provides enormous helpings of moral and financial support to them and their families and does battle with a recalcitrant Clarkston mayor to secure the team a decent playing field.
It's hard not to root for the Fugees, clad in ill-fitting shoes and makeshift uniforms and forced to practice on a dusty, glass-strewn playground, when they find themselves pitted against teams of affluent opponents, chauffeured from their suburban McMansions to the games in gleaming SUVs. But Outcasts United isn't merely a sugarcoated story of refugee youth submerging their differences in sport. It freely explores the tensions that flare among the young players, as they chafe under Luma's unyielding standards and as ethnic and religious differences surface. And it's a frank portrayal of the fierce determination of the Fugees' parents to overcome the daily hardships they confront simply trying to survive in their new homeland.
St. John doesn't confine his attention to the immigrants, providing a richly-detailed picture of the ways their presence has reshaped life in one sleepy Southern town. He describes the Thriftown supermarket's evolution from a failing grocery store into an international food bazaar, the former Clarkston Baptist Church's reinvention as a religiously diverse place of worship and the hiring of the town's first black police chief. "America is changing," one local pastor observes. "Get over it."
Franklin Foer once wrote that soccer "explains the world." Warren St. John does a fine job explaining a small slice of it in this bighearted book.--Harvey Freedenberg
Shelf Talker: The inspiring story of a motley band of young immigrants and how soccer transformed their lives and the life of a small American town.