Outcasts United Character Analysis

Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference is the incredible true story of the Fugees – short for refugees – a soccer team formed by refugees in Clarkston, Georgia. The author of Outcasts United, Warren St. John, was a journalist for the New York Times and has received awards from Sports Illustrated and others for excellence in writing on the subject of athletics. Warren’s achievement in Outcasts United, however, goes beyond providing incisive commentary and analysis about gameplay; it also involves the way he expounds upon the social significance of the athletic activity he describes. In more concrete terms, Warren illustrates how sports, this this case soccer, have the potential to serve as the common ground that unites groups of people from otherwise diverse backgrounds. …show more content…
The team’s members come from Afghanistan, Sudan, Burundi, Liberia, Bosnia, Congo, and other countries – over a dozen in total. Being a refugee means that one never really feels like one fits in, like one belongs, in the locale where one lives. One faces the twin pressures of staying true to one’s ethnic identity, or roots, while simultaneously assimilating the norms and customs of the native people. On top of that, the refugees in Clarkston were facing the economic burden of being in debt for the plane ride from their war-torn or otherwise intolerable country of origin and of having to quickly find a means of supporting themselves financially – receiving only three months of financial support to cover their expenses upon arrival in the U.S. In short, refugees in Clarkston felt alone and