Luma al-Mufleh Character Analysis

The founder and coach of the Fugees program. Luma is born and raised in Amman, Jordan, and attends the American Community School in Amman. At the school, she is inspired by her volleyball coach, Rhonda Brown , who is strict and demanding but gains a lot of respect from her players and helps them improve. Luma then attends Smith College before deciding to remain in America. This decision estranges her from her family, and she is forced to provide for herself entirely. She moves to Atlanta and starts coaching a girls’ team at the YMCA based on the leadership model of Coach Brown. Luma then discovers the refugee population in Clarkston and decides to start a soccer program for refugee boys. The team eventually earns the name “the Fugees.” Luma is hard on her players and expects a lot from them: she wants them to be on time, focus, and work hard. She expects them to respect rules like no drinking or drug use, keeping their hair short, and no cursing. Luma also makes an effort to help the players outside of the soccer team by starting a tutoring program to help them with schoolwork and getting to know their families. The program does not come without its challenges, however—the players are sometimes disobedient or lazy, and at the beginning they often divide into cliques based on nationality or language. Luma also faces challenges based in discrimination when the YMCA moves them from a nicer field at the Clarkston Community Center to a gravel field covered in broken glass, which she knows would never have happened to boys with affluent families. Still, despite (and perhaps because of) these extra challenges, Luma pours herself into helping the Fugees. And on the soccer field, although Luma is harsh with her players, the ones who buy into her system respect her deeply, and she is able to tangibly improve their lives and the lives of their families.

Luma al-Mufleh Quotes in Outcasts United

The Outcasts United quotes below are all either spoken by Luma al-Mufleh or refer to Luma al-Mufleh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

In fact, things with the Fugees were more fragile than I could have realized that day. The team had no home field. The players’ private lives were an intense daily struggle to stay afloat. They and their families had fled violence and chaos and found themselves in a place with a completely different set of values and customs.

She was just a woman who wanted, in her own way, to make the world a better place. She had vowed to come through for her players and their families or to come apart trying.