Outcasts United Warren St John 2009 Warren St

Outcasts United Warren St. John, 2009

Warren St. John • Born 1969 in Birmingham, AL • Former reporter for the New York Times • Two books • Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania (2004) • Outcasts United: An American Town, A Refugee Team, and One Woman's Quest to Make a Difference (2009)

Outcasts United • Setting: Clarkston, Georgia • Suburb of Atlanta • Tells the story of a soccer team for young refugees, the woman who founded the team, and the town where these people came together

Coach Luma

Themes • Dealing with change • Creating a sense of community in an atmosphere in which people don’t seem to have much in common • Searching for home • Searching for a sense of meaning and safety in an unpredictable world

Important terms • Ethnicity = the state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition • Refugee = a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster

Important terms • Assimilation = the process by which a person acquires the social and psychological characteristics of a group • Superdiversity = increased diversity not only between immigrant and ethnic minority groups, but also within them

Literary terms • Idiom = a phrase that has a figurative, rather than literal, meaning • Metaphor = comparison between two things • Theme = main idea or underlying meaning of a work

Literary terms • Irony = situation or words that suggest the opposite of what you really think or mean • Allusion = an indirect or passing reference • Mood = the atmosphere of a literary work