Book Launch Event: Luma Mufleh Presents

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About this Event

About this event

Join the Georgia Center for the Book and First Baptist Church of Decatur for another in our Conversations at First Baptist series featuring Luma Mufleh. She'll be discussing her new book Learning America: One Woman's Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Children, which tells the visionary leader’s powerful personal story and lays a blueprint for change that will inspire schools and communities across America. This free event will be at First Baptist Church Decatur, in the sanctuary. Registration is required, and COVID protocols will be in place.

Books for this event will be pre-signed. To order a pre-signed copy from A Cappella Books to be picked up at the event, please click here: PURCHASE.

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 to learn. Fugees accept 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.

SAFETY PROTOCOLS

We are committed to a safe environment for all writers, attendees, staff, and volunteers. Following CDC guidelines and adhering to the protocols of the First Baptist Church of Decatur, we are taking the following steps for safety during this program:

-Masks: Face masks must be adequately worn over the nose and the mouth on the entire church property, including outdoors.

-Social Distancing: Attendance indoors is capped at less than 50% of capacity, with alternating rows left vacant.

-Vaccines: Proof of completed COVID-19 vaccination (CDC COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card or image of the card) is required for anyone entering the church. In the rare event of a misplaced COVID-19 card, please provide proof of a negative test taken no more than 72 hours before the event and be prepared to sign a vaccine verification statement.