Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Outcasts United, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Refugees, Discrimination, and Resilience
Community and Teamwork vs. Division
Leadership and Respect
Discipline, Dedication, and Success
Summary
Analysis
Luma al-Mufleh is born in Amman, Jordan, to a wealthy family. Luma takes after her father, Hassan, who hides his emotions for fear of showing weakness. Hassan dotes on her, and expects that Luma will marry, stay close to home, and honor her family. But when Luma is growing up, her family notes her independence, and also her “deep concern for the weak or defenseless.”
Even as a young girl, St. John (and Luma’s family) notes key traits of Luma that will become crucial to her ability to lead the Fugees: first, her independence, despite her being a Jordanian woman, and second, her desire to help others who cannot always help themselves.
Themes
The al-Mufleh’s send Luma to the American Community School (ACS) in Amman, a school for the children of American expatriates and elite Jordanians. Luma learns to speak English and meets other children from all over the world. Luma lives at a distance from Amman’s problems, which include poverty and the tensions from Palestinian and Iraqi refugees. But her maternal grandmother, Munawar, makes a point of helping the poor when she can.
Luma learns another skill that will help her with the Fugees: the ability to make friends with kids who come from all over the world. This will eventually aid in her quest to forge a community for the boys and help them find the commonalities among them.
Themes
Near Munawar’s home is a soccer field, where Luma watches young men play from a nearby wall. Eventually, she builds up the nerve to join in, until her grandmother spots her and tells her it is “improper” for a young girl to be around strange men. At the ACS, however, Luma is able to play sports with the boys.
Luma discovers her love of soccer early, and experiences how it connects her to a team and community. Her desire prevails at school, even if she is unable to play at the soccer field near Munawar’s house.
Themes
Luma plays many sports and stands out to her coaches—particularly the volleyball coach, an African American woman named Rhonda Brown. Coach Brown asks a lot of her players, especially Luma. Brown expects her players to “be on time to practice, work hard, to focus, and to improve.” Brown sets an example for her players—she is always on time, organized, and joins in on their drills. She also challenges them, saying that if she beats her players, they can expect the worst practices ever.
Coach Brown serves as an early model for Luma’s own coaching style, as she demands dedication and discipline from Luma, just as Luma goes on to expect this from the boys. She also provides an example to Luma in showing that leadership means earning the respect of the players—sometimes by proving one’s own ability.
Themes
Get the entire Outcasts United LitChart as a printable PDF.
Brown understands that her players may not like her at first, but hopes that they will eventually buy in. Luma doesn’t like Brown at all, but she doesn’t complain about the work. Luma also starts to realize that the practices are having an effect, and the team improves. She also knows that she wants very badly to play well for Coach Brown.
Brown also teaches Luma that leadership means earning respect from one’s players, and it is clear that Luma respects Brown because she wants to play well for her coach. Leadership does not necessarily mean that all the players like their coach, and sometimes it even necessitates that they do not.
Themes
As Luma grows older, she starts to “feel at odds with the strict Jordanian society in which she had grown up.” Towards the end of her junior year, she decides to go to college in the United States. She enrolls at Hobart and William Smith College before transferring to Smith College, an all-women’s school in Massachusetts. She is excited by her ability to be independent at the school, a feeling she had been deprived of at home.
Luma is excited to find a community in which she feels like she belongs. This emphasizes the importance of community and a shared set of values, which will become key to the Fugees later on, even as the boys come from a diverse array of countries, ethnicities, and religions.
Themes
When Luma returns to Jordan before her final year at Smith, she realizes that she has become so independent that she could never feel comfortable living in Amman. In June 1997, Luma graduates from Smith, and tells her parents by phone that she would be staying in the United States and not returning home. Hassan is devastated and angry, and warns that he will cut her off from family funds if she chose to stay. Luma doesn’t budge, and she feels the lifestyle change abruptly. She has almost nothing, and now has to fend for herself.
In some ways, Luma’s stubbornness ends up cutting her off from her family. But it is a key aspect of what makes her a leader and what earns her respect from the Fugees. Additionally, it shows Luma’s own dedication to a different kind of life than the one she was expected to lead, a dedication which will allow both her and the Fugees to succeed.
Themes
After graduation, Luma stays with a friend who lives in North Carolina. She doesn’t yet have a permit to work legally in the United States, so she looks for jobs available to illegal immigrants in the area. She washes dishes and cleans toilet at a local restaurant. In 1999, she decides to move to Atlanta because she likes the weather, which reminds her of Amman. She doesn’t have much of a plan, but is determined to make it on her own.
Luma is not a refugee, and her past is very different from that of those of the Fugees. But at the same time, Luma does experience some of what the Fugees go through: having to find difficult and underpaid jobs, having very little assistance, and having to adjust to a new culture that may not necessarily want her there.
Themes
