On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle

An audacious revolutionary experiment in the backyard of empire, Cuba has occupied a vexed role in the international order for decades. Though its doctors (and fighters)--and the outsized influence of its example--have traversed the globe, from Venezuela to Angola, its political and economic future remain uncertain as the Castro era comes to a close and the U.S. embargo proceeds unabated.

Through an intimate conversation between two of the country's most astute observers of international politics, Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad, On Cuba traces Cuban history from the early days of the 1950s revolution to the present, interrogating U.S. interventions and extracting lessons on U.S. power and influence in the Western Hemisphere along the way. Neither a jingoistic condemnation nor an uncritical celebration, Chomsky's heterodox approach to world affairs is on full display as he and Prashad grapple with Cuba's unique place on the international scene.

In a media landscape saturated with half-truths and fake news, Chomsky and Prashad--"our own Frantz Fanon . . . [whose] writing of protest is always tinged with the beauty of hope" (Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana)--seek to shed light on the truth of a complex and perennially controversial nation, while examining the limits of mainstream media discourse.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor (emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor of Linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. A world-renowned linguist and political activist, he is the author of numerous books, including On Language, Understanding Power (edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel), American Power and the New Mandarins, For Reasons of State, Problems of Knowledge and Freedom, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, Towards a New Cold War, The Essential Chomsky (edited by Anthony Arnove), On Anarchism, The Chomsky-Foucault Debate (with Michel Foucault), and The Withdrawal and On Cuba (both with Vijay Prashad), all published by The New Press. He lives in São Paulo, Brazil.

Vijay Prashad is director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, editor of LeftWord Books, and the chief correspondent for Globetrotter (Independent Media Institute). He is the author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today, and co-author (with Noam Chomsky) of The Withdrawal and On Cuba (all published by The New Press), as well as Washington Bullets. The Darker Nations was chosen as a Best Nonfiction Book of the Year by the Asian American Writers' Workshop and won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize. He lives in Santiago, Chile.