EMMANUEL BURGIN
Author
Emmanuel Burgin is the former sports editor of El Sol de San Diego and the author of the novel Vagabond Blues, a San Diego Book Award finalist and co-author of the nonfiction book San Diego Drag Racing and the Bean Bandits. Emmanuel is a PEN America member.
Emmanuel enjoys listening to jazz and blues and frequenting as many music clubs as humanly possible. He also considers himself a photography enthusiast. It is the one activity that gets him OUTSIDE.
Robbie Santos is a young man with dreams of NFL stardom thrust into a netherworld of minor league football where players hopped up on speed and painkillers injure one another for no other reason than because they can. They are drunks and drug-users, Vietnam Vets and NFL misfits, all trying just as hard to keep the adrenaline rush going after the game.
“Brutal and Endearing.”
-Void Magazine
“Burgin illustrates the pain, confusion and battle like crush of the players in spare sentences that make you feel you are in the game. It’s the type of football book that once you start reading, you cannot put it down until you are finished.”
-Minor League Professional Football Newsletter
“A smart, hard-hitting novel that will grab you and carry you into the hearts of the players and the game.”
-Ken Kuhlken- Author of The DO-RE-MI
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It is 1955. James Dean is starring in “Rebel Without a Cause,” Elvis is recording at Sun Studios, Jack Kerouac is writing “On the Road”, and in Northern California on a crisp October night at the Freemont Drag Strip, two thousand people stand on either side of a quarter mile long strip of pavement, leaning ever forward until those at the end look as if they are bowing with their heads turned toward the starting line, their eyes transfixed on a banana yellow dragster.
“San Diego enjoys a long and storied drag racing history, and the Bean Bandits are a huge part of that heritage. Yet their story remains buried in plain sight. Told here in photographs garnered from private, personal, and historical collections, the 1950s pioneering exploits of Bean Bandits leader Joaquin Arnett and his contributions to that racing history come to life. The San Diego native led his Bean Bandits to over three hundred wins during their career, winning the first National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Championship in 1953. In 1992, Joaquin Arnett was named to the International Car Racing Hall of Fame, and in 1994, he was awarded with a NHRA Lifetime Achievement Award.”
-Arcadia Publishing
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In October of 1997 land-speed racers from around the world converged on the small town of Wendover, located nine miles from the Bonneville Salt Flats in the state of Utah. They have arrived for the annual World of Speed meet to compete against land-speed records in several of the wheel-driven classes, including the Electric and Thrust (jet car) categories.
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In January 1993, nine inches of rain fell on the San Diego / Tijuana region, seven inches more than normal for the month. Most of the rain within a two-week period, flooding many parts of the region. When it was over, 66 people in Tijuana had lost their lives.
– His mother and father torn from his grasp by the tremendous force of the initial wave that crashed through his parent’s dwelling is a heartbreaking story of loss yet Antonio’s fight to find his parents bodies in the aftermath of the deadly flood amid the natural wake of destructiveness and the artificial impediments born in the name of political power is also a testament to the indomitable spirit of humanity. – Emmanuel Burgin
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FROM THE BLOG
Walkabout
A quick note on Walkabout. I took the name from the Australian Aboriginal rite of passage. In Aboriginal society, when a young male comes of age, he is sent to live in the wilderness and to walk the same paths his ancestors walked. In so doing, the journey becomes a spiritual communion with them.
Like some of you, I too am on a Walkabout. And the stories I find and tell here are my effort to see the path more clearly.
