Outcasts United: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Luma knows nothing of Clarkston or the refugees when she moves to nearby Decatur, only a few miles away. She gets a job waiting tables before finding a job at the Decatur-DeKalb YMCA, coaching the fourteen-and-under girls’ soccer team. She coaches following the example set for her by Coach Brown, running very demanding practices.

Luma’s approach isn’t universally well-received. She’s very tough and expects the girls to take responsibility for how they play and behave at practices. During her first season, Luma’s team loses every game. But over time, the dedicated players improve, and those who aren’t dedicated leave. In her third season, the team goes undefeated and wins their year-end tournament.

Luma focuses on the team, but she is also homesick, and she misses her family. In 2002, Munawar, the only family member who still speaks to her, dies. As Luma grieves, she drives around the greater Atlanta area and finds a small Middle Eastern market called Talars, which sells some of her favorite foods from home.  She is surprised to find a community of people in African and Middle Eastern dress at the store, but she doesn’t give much thought to it.

Luma decides to start her own business: a café that sells ice cream and sandwiches. She cobbles together a set of investors from the contacts she’d made, and opens the café, called Ashton’s. Running the café is tough—she puts in sixteen-hour days, and the café doesn’t pull in enough customers to make money. She is also still coaching the girls’ team in the evenings and is exhausted.

One day, when visiting Talars, Luma notices a group of boys playing soccer in a nearby parking lot. She is amazed that they seem to come from many different backgrounds and watches them play. On her next trip to Talars, she brings a new soccer ball and asks to join in. They are wary but allow her to join. She becomes pleasantly lost in the game, noting that it reminds her of what she misses about her own community, and how much she still feels “like such an outsider.”

Over the next few months, Luma continues to stop by Talars and join in on the soccer games. She gradually gets to know the boys, who are eager to connect with her. Luma understands “the loneliness of being uprooted.” She also learns that pickup soccer is all that they can afford—even teams at local schools cost too much. This fact prompts Luma to decide to begin a free soccer program for young refugees, feeling a “nagging urge to do something.”

Luma floats the idea for the program to a mother of one of the players on the girls’ team, who is on the board of the YMCA. The Y agrees to commit money to rent the field at the community center in Clarkston and to buy equipment. Then, with the help of friends, she creates flyers announcing tryouts in English, Vietnamese, Arabic, and French. She posts them in apartment complexes in Clarkston, unsure if anyone will show up.