By Clyde Edgerton | April/May 2009 | 

Goal!

Refugees in a small Georgia town come together on the soccer field

Let’s say your local high school teaches students from over fifty countries. Your main local Baptist church lost six hundred of its seven hundred members because of reactions to an influx of refugees into your community. The owner of your local supermarket wants to serve its customers from Laos, Bosnia, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States. This applies if you’ve been living in Clarkston, Georgia, for a while.

In the 1980s, nonprofit agencies (like the International Rescue Committee and World Relief) were looking for places to send refugees from war-torn areas around the world. Clarkston, near Atlanta, looked ripe for refugee resettlement. Atlanta—with public transportation to and fro—offered places to work. Low-cost housing was available. Nice climate. So from often unspeakably horrid situations came thousands of refugees.

Outcasts United (Spiegel & Grau), by Warren St. John, is primarily about one season with a coach and her youth soccer teams of refugee boys—the Fugees—who live, play, and go to school in Clarkston. It tells, with suspense and tension, of the team’s camaraderie, wins, losses, close calls, and disagreements.

But this narrative is about much more, and because of the beauty of the book—including lessons and stories mirroring the best and the worst of us as Americans and world citizens—I’m predicting it will be a best seller. A movie is already in development, and I can see why: There are heroes and villains here, and stories within stories, all handled masterfully (timing, pacing, highlighting) by St. John.

Early in the narrative I became apprehensive when I saw a negative mention of “Dixie” (a term I’ve not heard from a Southerner in roughly forty years). Then there were references to the Clarkston mayor’s “big white pickup truck of the sort you might expect to see on a ranch,” “thick low-country accent,” and “South Carolina upbringing.” Though I’m not sure what “thick low-country accent” or “South Carolina upbringing” means, I sort of got the picture. I feared yet another prejudiced report about prejudiced Southerners.