Undocumented, Aviva Chomsky
Undocumented, Aviva Chomsky
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Undocumented
How Immigration Became Illegal

Author: Aviva Chomsky

Narrator: Frankie Corzo

Unabridged: 7 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 07/04/2017

Synopsis

A longtime immigration activist explores what it means to be an undocumented American in this “impassioned and well-reported case for change” (New York Times).
 
In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends.
 
Blending history with human drama, Chomsky explores what it means to be undocumented in a legal, social, economic, and historical context. The result is a powerful testament of the complex, contradictory, and ever-shifting nature of status in America.

About The Author

Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University. The author of several books, Chomsky has been active in Latin American solidarity and immigrants’ rights issues for over twenty-five years. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Megan on June 30, 2016

I checked this book out from the library but it had a lot of important things I want to remember for future reference so I'm going to diligently re-type a lot of the facts and tidbits I found particularly important/insightful: "Was it a paradox that the Border Patrol was created in the 1920s, just wh......more

Goodreads review by Maria on June 18, 2014

I really like the way Chomsky discusses the issue of immigration. A lot of other books I've read don't examine the immigration system in a historical context (this is so important to talk about), which is something Chomsky strives to do in this book. Immigration in the United States has been raciali......more

Goodreads review by Thomas Ray on August 17, 2021

Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal Aviva Chomsky (Noam's daughter) [URL not allowed] 2014 246pp. ISBN 9780807001677 Dewey 364.1370973 The generally unacknowledged work they do is a crucial underpinning to the standard of living and consumption enjoyed by virtually everyon......more

Goodreads review by T.Kay on January 04, 2015

I admit that I have not read a lot from Noam Chomsky, but there is something so great about seeing the daughter of intelligent, liberal parents not rebel by being a neo-conservative. I guess that reveals some of my unaddressed fears in parenting.......more

Goodreads review by Bria on October 14, 2016

I learned so much from this book! I read a good part of it while on a road trip. I kept having the husband turn down the music as I read him sections. I had no idea how convoluted our current immigration process is, nor how historical immigration has shaped not only those policies, but also the mode......more

Quotes

“An impassioned and well-reported case for change . . . Chomsky ably lays out just how brutal life can be for the undocumented.” 
—New York Times Sunday Book Review

“Undocumented adds smart, new, and provocative scholarship to the immigration debate.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books

“From the first page to the last, Undocumented is to immigrant rights movement what We Charge Genocide was to the African American movement—a dossier that sets aside quibbles about whether immigrants contribute to the US economy or not, whether immigrants speak English or not and gives flesh to the slogan, 'Immigrant rights are human rights.' A clear-headed and smart book that locates the struggles of immigrants squarely in the struggles for human rights. Nothing less is to be accommodated, and much more is to be imagined.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South

“Professional in her scholarship, Chomsky has written a book that will be relevant to those who do not share her position as well as to those who do.”
—Publishers Weekly

 “Dares to call the [immigration] problem ‘manufactured,’ one that could be solved with the stroke of a pen.”
—Ms. Magazine

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