Outcasts united A refugee team, an American town

Review by Booklist Review

Tales of tough coaches and playing-field redemption are so ingrained in our culture as to seem a uniquely American phenomenon. So, too, are stories of immigration and assimilation. St. John (Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, 2004) hits a trifecta, finding a story of strictly coached immigrant soccer players faced with another familiar plot element: a small town's distrust of outsiders. Sleepy Clarkston, Georgia, surprised to find itself hosting refugees from more than 100 war-torn countries, refuses to allow youth soccer games on its baseball fields, even though it's been years since the town had an active baseball team. Luma Mufleh, the Smith College-educated daughter of wealthy Jordanians, seems an unlikely coach, but as she wages a relentless fight to let the kids play and help their families thrive we soon realize that her accomplishments are far greater than any college coach with an undefeated season. Inspired by articles St. John reported for the New York Times, this is a fascinating and fast-moving account of big-picture politics, small-town sports, and some very memorable people.--Graff, Keir Copyright 2009 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

St. John (Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer) builds on his 2007 New York Times article about the Fugees, a soccer program for boys from families of refugees from war-torn nations who have been resettled in the town of Clarkston, Ga., 13 miles east of Atlanta. Led by the founder and coach Luma Mufleh, a strong-willed, Jordanian woman who turned her back on a privileged past to stay in America after attending Smith College, the three youth teams are a conglomeration of players from Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East. The challenges they face are many, including an ongoing fight against city hall for a field on which to play, and getting by with subpar equipment. Their biggest challenge, however, is the difficulty immigrants face in learning the ways of a strange land and living with the memories of tragedy (some players had lost a parent to violence or imprisonment). In spite of it all, the Fugees compete admirably with mostly white, better-funded suburban teams. St. John begins with an inspiring description of a beautifully played game and then delves into the team's formation, but his storytelling takes on the methodical approach of a long series of newspaper articles that lack narrative flair and progression. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

St. John (Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania) tells the tale of the Fugees soccer team and their enigmatic coach, Luma Mufleh. The members of the Fugees were refugees from all over the globe, rescued by the UN's High Commission for Refugees, living together in a crime-riddled settlement center in Clarkston, GA. The stories of their escapes are harrowing. For example, Paula Balegamire and her five children fled civil war in Kivu through Rwanda, Tanzania, and Congo before accepting resettlement in Clarkston six years later. Her husband was jailed along the way. Not merely about soccer, St. John's book teaches readers about the social and economic difficulties of adapting to a new culture and the challenges facing a town with a new and disparate population. Despite their cultural and religious differences and the difficulty of adaptation, the Fugees came together to play soccer. This wonderful, poignant book is highly recommended for libraries collecting on the role of sport in people's lives and for those with an interest in immigration.-Todd Spires, Bradley Univ. Lib., Peoria, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Adult/High School-St. John, a New York Times reporter, brought Clarkston, GA, to national attention in 2007 with a series of articles about the changes in the small Southern town brought about by an influx of refugees from all over the world. This book comes out of those articles. It gives more detail about the town and, most particularly, the three soccer teams composed of refugee boys (the Fugees) who were coached by Luma Mufleh, an American-educated Jordanian woman. The book is a sports story, a sociological study, a tale of global and local politics, and the story of a determined woman who became involved in the lives of her young charges. Keeping the boys in school and out of gangs, finding a place for them to practice, and helping their families survive in a new world all became part of her daily life. Engagingly written, this volume will appeal to fans of Larry Colton's Counting Coup (Grand Central, 2000), H. G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights (HarperCollins, 1991), and Madeleine Blais's In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle (Grand Central, 1996).-Sarah Flowers, formerly at Santa Clara County Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Richly detailed, uplifting account of a young Jordanian migr who created a soccer program in Georgia for young refugees from war-torn nations. Expanding on his front-page series in the New York Times, St. John (Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, 2004) shows one determined woman profoundly impacting the lives of dozens of impoverished families. Arriving in the sleepy Atlanta suburb of Clarkston shortly after her graduation from Smith College in 1997, Luma Mufleh saw young refugee children playing soccer in the vacant lots around town. She persuaded the local YMCA to fund a free soccer program and signed on as its unpaid coach. She forged a team, the Fugees, out of recruits from such disparate lands as Liberia, Sudan, Zaire, Kosovo and Afghanistan. She offered youngsters traumatized by civil war and genocide the chance to enjoy a familiar pastime, often acting as a surrogate mother for children whose struggling parents worked long hours to support them. The Fugees' birth was not without challenges. Mufleh had to overcome prejudice from wary Clarkston residents, who resented the thousands of foreigners placed in their midst by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. Mayor Lee Swaney repeatedly blocked the Fugees from practicing on the town's unused playing fields. Mufleh also had to combat the lure of local street gangs, "which promised both belonging and status" to kids who had little experience of either. Nevertheless, under her stern but steady guidance, the Fugees proved more than competitive against their better-equipped, well-supported suburban opponents. St. John combines this underdog sports saga with shocking background on the frequently bloody journeys taken by refugee families en route to Clarkston. He also provides some valuable sociological insight into the adjustments required from both the refugees and their Clarkston neighbors to keep this small-town melting pot from boiling over. Readable, educational and enriching. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One Luma The name Luma means "dark lips," though Hassan and Sawsan al-Mufleh chose it for their first child less because of the shade of her lips than because they liked the sound of the name-short, endearing, and cheerful-in the context of both Arabic and English. The al-Mufl ehs were a wealthy, Westernized family in Amman, Jordan, a teeming city of two million, set among nineteen hills and cooled by a swirl of dry desert breezes. The family made its fortune primarily from making rebar-the metal rods used to strengthen concrete-which it sold across Jordan. Hassan had attended a Quaker school in Lebanon, and then college in the United States at the State University of New York in Oswego-"the same college as Jerry Seinfeld," he liked to tell people. Luma's mother, Sawsan, was emotional and direct, and there was never any doubt about her mood or feelings. Luma, though, took after her father, Hassan, a man who mixed unassailable toughness with a capacity to detach, a combination that seemed designed to keep his emotions hidden for fear of revealing weakness. "My sister and my dad don't like people going into them and knowing who they are," said Inam al-Mufl eh, Luma's younger sister byeleven years and now a researcher for the Jordanian army in Amman. "Luma's very sensitive but she never shows it. She doesn't want anyone to know where her soft spot is." As a child, Luma was doted on by her family, sometimes to an extraordinary degree. At the age of three, Luma idly mentioned to her grandmother that she thought her grandparents' new Mercedes 450 SL was "beautiful." The next day, the grandparents' driver showed up at Hassan and Sawsan al-Mufl eh's home with a gift: a set of keys to the Mercedes, which, they were told, now belonged to their threeyear-old daughter. Hassan too doted on his eldest child. He had high expectations for her, and imagined her growing up to fulfi ll the prescribed role of a woman in a prominent Jordanian family. He expected her to marry, to stay close to home, and to honor her family. From the time Luma was just a young girl, adults around her began to note her quiet confi dence, which was so pronounced that her parents occasionally found themselves at a loss. "When we would go to the PTA meetings," Hassan recalled, "they'd ask me, 'Why are you asking about Luma? She doesn't need your help.' " Sometimes, Luma's parents found themselves striving to please their confi dent daughter, rather than the other way around. Hassan recalled that on a family vacation to Spain when Luma was ten or eleven years old, he had ordered a glass of sangria over dinner, in violation of the Muslim prohibition against drinking alcohol. When the drink arrived, Luma began to sob uncontrollably. "She said, 'I love my father too much-I don't want him to go to hell,' " Hassan recalled. He asked the waitress to take the sangria away. "I didn't drink after that," he said. Luma encouraged-or perhaps demanded-that her younger sister, Inam, cultivate self-suffi ciency, often against Inam's own instincts or wishes. "She was a tough older sister-very tough love," Inam said. "She would make me do things that I didn't want to do. She never wanted me to take the easy way out. And she wouldn't accept me crying." Inam said that she has a particularly vivid memory of her older sister's tough love in action. The al-Mufl ehs had gathered with their cousins, as they often did on weekends, at the family farm in a rural area called Mahes, half an hour from Amman. Inam, who was just seven or eight at the time, said that Luma took h Excerpted from Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town by Warren St. John All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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