21 Miles of Scenic Beauty... and then Oxnard: Counterstories and Testimonies

By Martín Alberto Gonzalez

Despite its wonderful everyday weather and beautiful surf-ridden beaches, Oxnard, California, has a reputation of being dangerous and demoralizing due to its gang presence. In this book, Martín Alberto Gonzalez takes this reputation head on through a series of social justice-oriented stories loosely based on his experiences and observations growing up in Oxnard as a first-generation Xicano. Rather than focusing on everything that deems the city bad, such as its overabundance of undereducated Brown people, Martín flips the script through counterstorytelling and testimonies in order to shed light on various injustices directly impacting his community, such as inequitable schooling practices, segregation, gentrification, and many more.