21 Miles of Scenic Beauty ... and Then Oxnard

Book excerpt: 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, Mart�n 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, Mart�n 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.