Refugees at risk

Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference

Warren St. John

New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2009

Pp. 320

“Outcasts United” portrays the dramatic situation of refugees resettled in a small American town in northern Georgia. Their situation is similar to what happens in many countries every day, including Jordan. The book tells the story of the football team they formed and their coach, Luma. 

Warren St. John, a talented journalist, felt the sorrow of these refugees and wanted to present their story to the world. He travelled to Clarkston, Georgia, interviewed the refugees and wrote this book. In it, one sees how the refugees, coming from different countries and backgrounds, struggled to adapt to their new life. One also learns how a sympathetic Muslim woman from Amman, Jordan, made a difference by volunteering to be their team coach.

Clarkston is a small southern town where only local people lived up through the 1980s. The mayor used to say, Clarkston was “just a sleepy little town by the railroad tracks.” (p. 33)

Then in the 1990s, Clarkston was designated a refugee settlement centre, receiving families from Liberia, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries torn by war. Many changes occurred in the town as a result of the diversity of traditions and cultures of the newcomers. It wasn’t easy for the locals to accept the population increase in their small, quiet town. Some of them even left their town. Others treated the refugees like outcasts. 

Luma came to the town not as a refugee but to shop! After finishing her studies in the US, she wanted to live independently and refused to go back to Jordan. Then she started to work as a volunteer with the refugees. It was not easy to deal with the refugees who had suffered a lot in their lives. Every one of them had experienced a different kind of pain; some of them had lost a father, a mother or other close relative. One example was Jeremiah whose mother was forced to run away, leaving his sick brother and father to die, in order to save him and his other brother.

Luma needed strength and courage to deal with the kids. She faced many challenges to get the boys to work together. Sometimes she had to be very strict with them, like when she didn’t allow them to play until they finished their homework. Another serious decision Luma made was not allowing them to talk to each other in their own language. She wanted them to feel responsible and united. She worked to be close to the boys so they listened to her. Because of her efforts, football became an important thing in the boys’ lives. Bien, one of the team members, said in describing his summer, “Without football, life was boring.” (p. 101)

The problems Luma faced were not only among the refugee boys but from the larger society as well. Being a newcomer is not easy, and establishing a football team is harder. The team faced rejection from people living in the town. The first season was especially tough because the team didn’t have a practice field, but Luma kept on encouraging the boys and making them focus on the positive side rather than on the negative.

Another season came and the refugee team kept struggling. St. John poignantly conveys how little boys suffer just as do adult refugees and immigrants. Reading this book, one finds many similarities between the refugees and immigrants in Clarkston and refugees in Jordan and other countries.

Like in the US, refugees in Jordan don’t enjoy the same standard of living as most local people, and they are often at risk. They have to work harder; they work longer hours for less pay. At times, working illegally is the only way to survive. They face the danger of deportation and have no idea what they will face in the country where they will eventually be resettled. 

Due to these similarities and more, this story will appeal to many people all over the world, including in Jordan, which hosts many refugees seeking asylum or relocation.

Wassim Shamass and Sally Bland