Overview

A visionary leader's powerful personal story and a blueprint for change that will inspire schools and communities across America. Luma Mufleh--a Muslim woman, a gay refugee from hyper-conservative Jordan--joins a pick-up game of soccer in Clarkston, Georgia. The players, 11- and 12-year-olds from Liberia and Afghanistan and Sudan, have attended local schools for years. Drawn in as coach of a ragtag but fiercely competitive team, Mufleh discovers that few of her players can read a word. She asks, Where was the America that took me in? That protected me? How can I get these kids to that America? For readers of Malala, Paul Tough, and Bryan Stevenson, Learning America is the moving and insight-packed story of how Luma Mufleh grew a soccer team into a nationally acclaimed network of schools--by homing in laserlike on what traumatized students need in order to learn. Fugees accepts only those most in need: students recruit other students, and all share a background of war, poverty, and trauma. No student passes a grade without earning it; the failure of any student is the responsibility of all. Most foundational, everyone takes art and music and everyone plays soccer, areas where students make the leaps that can and must happen--as this gifted refugee activist convinces--even for America's most left-behind.

Full Product Details

9780358712787

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Reviews

Luma Mufleh brings her full self to her work, and now, in these pages, to telling the remarkable story of Fugees Family. Our shared American story comes to life in this compelling book. --Laurene Powell Jobs, founder and president, Emerson Collective A truly extraordinary story of selflessness, compassion, and the pursuit of justice for one of the most vulnerable communities in our society: refugee children. Luma Mufleh gorgeously weaves her story as a gay, Jordanian immigrant living in America and her lifelong passion of coaching soccer to better the lives of refugee kids across the country. --Jose Antonio Vargas, founder of Define American and best-selling author of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen Luma Mufleh set out to build a soccer team for traumatized young refugees, only to discover the unconscionable neglect they were suffering at the hands of American public education. Then, with inexhaustible humanity, she created a school to make them whole, as learners and as people. Her heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring story illuminates how to remedy educational injustice not only for refugees but also for millions of children born into poverty and trauma in our own country. --Dale Russakoff, author of the New York Times bestseller The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools? Luma Mufleh is truly remarkable, inspiring not only to her team of 'Fugees' but to anyone in the world who reads this book. It's a powerful story, reminding us that the journey of refugees and immigrants doesn't end the day they arrive in America. Coach Luma shows us the deep power of one of the world's most universal languages, soccer, and above all the unifying strength of community. --Jose Andres, chef, humanitarian, founder of World Central Kitchens --No Source

Heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring. -- Dale Russakoff, New York Times bestselling author

Author Information

LUMA MUFLEH is the founder of Fugees Family, with schools now in Georgia and Ohio and an expanding footprint bringing educational equity to refugee resettlement communities across America. Her TED Talk on educational justice for refugee families was viewed more than 1.7 million times. LUMA MUFLEH is the founder of Fugees Family, with schools now in Georgia and Ohio and an expanding footprint bringing educational equity to refugee resettlement communities across America. Her TED Talk on educational justice for refugee families was viewed more than 1.7 million times.

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