Aviva Chomsky is an American historian, author, and activist. She teaches at Salem State College

Salem State College

Salem State University is a four-year public institution of higher learning located in Salem, Massachusetts. Salem State University, established in 1854 as Salem Normal School, is located approximately fifteen miles north of Boston, Massachusetts. Salem State enrolls over 10,000 undergraduate and...

 in Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, where she is also the coordinator of the Latin American studies

Latin American Studies

Latin American studies is an academic discipline dealing with the study of Latin America and Latin Americans.-Definition:Latin American studies critically examines the history, culture, politics, and experiences of Latin Americans in Latin America and often also elsewhere .Latin American studies...

 program. She previously taught at Bates College

Bates College

Bates College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. and was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2011 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists...

 in Maine

Maine

Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...

, and was a research associate at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, where she specialized in Caribbean and Latin American history. She is the eldest daughter of linguists Noam

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

 and Carol Chomsky

Carol Chomsky

Carol Chomsky was an American linguist and education specialist who studied language acquisition in children....

. Her paternal grandfather, William Chomsky

William Chomsky

William Chomsky was an American scholar of Hebrew, born in Russia , who was a professor at Gratz College. He was made faculty president of Gratz in 1932, a position that he held for thirty seven years. He also taught at Dropsie College, a graduate school of Jewish and Semitic studies from 1955...

 (1896–1978), was a Hebrew scholar at, and principal of, Gratz College

Gratz College

Gratz College is a general college of Jewish studies founded in 1895 offering a broad array of credentials and programs in virtually every area of higher Judaic learning to aspiring Jewish educators, communal professionals, lay people and others seeking to become more knowledgeable of...

 for many years.

Her book West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica 1870–1940

West Indian Workers and United Fruit Company

West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870–1940 is a 1996 book written by Aviva Chomsky. It details the history of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, formed in 1899 from previous railroads and banana-growing interests in Costa Rica. It also describes how the local...

relates the history of the U.S.-based companies which built railroads and cultivated bananas on the Atlantic Coast of Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

 and merged to form United Fruit in 1899. It also describes how the workers, including many Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

ns, originally of Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

n descent, developed their own parallel socio-economic system. The book was awarded the 1997 Best Book Prize by the New England Council of Latin American Studies.

She has also co-edited books, including The People Behind the Coal, Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State, and The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Latin America Readers).

Publications

• A History of the Cuban Revolution, Wiley-Blackwell, New York, NY . Paperback. 224 pages. October 2010.ISBN 978-1-4051-8773-2
• Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class. Duke University Press,Durham, North Caroline. 2008. ISBN 0822341905

• The People Behind Colombian Coal/Bajo el manto del carbon, Aviva Chomsky, Garry Leech, Steve Striffler (Editors), 2007. ISBN 9589799558

• They Take Our Jobs! and 20 Other Myths About Immigration. Beacon Press, July 2007. Paperback: 236 pages . In English. (ISBN 978-0807041567).

• West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica
  West Indian Workers and United Fruit Company
  West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870–1940 is a 1996 book written by Aviva Chomsky. It details the history of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, formed in 1899 from previous railroads and banana-growing interests in Costa Rica. It also describes how the local...
  
  , 1870–1940. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8071-1979-2

• Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring People of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean, (Comparative and International Working-Class History), Aviva Chomsky and Aldo Lauria-Santiago (Editors), 1998. 404 pages. Duke University Press, Durham, North Caroline, (ISBN 978-0822322023)

• The Profits of Extermination: How U.S. Corporate Power is Destroying Colombia
  The Profits of Extermination
  The Profits of Extermination is a 2005 book written by Colombian trade unionist and human rights activist Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, and translated into English by Aviva Chomsky...
  
  , Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, Common Courage Press, (ISBN 1-56751-322-0), 2005. (Translation and introduction by Aviva Chomsky)

• The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics, Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, Pamela Maria Smorkaloff (Editors), Duke University Press, Durham, North Caroline, January 2004. (ISBN 978-0822331971).

• The Dispossessed: Chronicles of the Desterrados of Colombia
  The Dispossessed : Colombia
  The Dispossessed: Chronicles of the Desterrados of Colombia is a 2005 book written by Alfredo Molano. Aviva Chomsky wrote the introduction to the English edition of this book. The translation was provided by Daniel Bland....
  
  (ISBN 1-931859-17-5) Author: Alfredo Molano (Introduction by Aviva Chomsky.)

External links

• http://www.avivachomsky.com
• Faculty profile at Salem State College.
• Review of The Costa Rica Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Steven Palmer and Iván Molina, eds. Durham: Duke University Press, Durham North Caroline, November 2004.