Luma Mufleh

Luma Mufleh struggling through ordeals to obtain a decent field for her soccer team reveals a metaphor Warren St. John uses for the social changes many of the refugees went through when immigrating to Clarkston. This metaphor highlights the significance of the book, namely that both as a society and as individual, we should not fear change, but work diligently through it to reach a satisfactory end product. Luma’s soccer field struggle going from Community Center to Indian Creek Elementary School to Milam Park followed a similar trend to what the refugees struggled with in their lives. The trend went along the following pattern: the state of things seemed decent, then took a turn for the worse, but eventually turned out to be alright again.

The countries Libya, Iraq, Sudan and all of the other places the refugees of Clarkston came from were at one time very hospitable places and were capable of supporting good lives. The refugees were doing well there- they had family, culture, and in some cases, even wealth to be proud of. They knew how to properly discipline their kids. They had social lives and friends anyone could be happy with. They understood the proper way to socially interact with someone. Warren St. John went a long way to ensure that the reader knew that those countries weren’t always ravaged by war, using paragraphs or entire chapters to convey the story of how those countries got to ripped apart forcing people to leave their homes. He emphasized the fact that something went wrong. And when the refugees like Beatrice Ziaty, Paula Balegamire, or Kanue Biah experienced that hardship, they were torn apart. Social norms didn’t work anymore. They were completely at the mercy of the United Nations and relocation programs, and yet in spite of the little they could realistically do, the refugees kept trying. Over and over they

Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. The story goes on to tell how the refugees’ hard work paid off and they found a new community in Clarkston, they found new friends, new jobs and new ways to be happy. Most of the time that involved Luma and the Fugees. Warren St. John again uses extreme detail to describe just how happy the Fugees became after joining the team once again highlighting just how much better things had become. They had a family and had basic social needs satiated because of that team. One example of this was Kanue. “With no siblings in the United States, and a guardian who was hardly ever home, Kanue began to view the team as his family” (137). Luma became a liaison between many refugees and the world of modern America, helping them to once again understand social norms, as well as acting like a parent for players like Kanue. The story of refugees is one of hope and the rewards of hard work. It is the most significant idea that St. John presents in his book, and he uses the metaphor of the practice fields to highlight it