Latinx Talk Editorial Board member Perla Guerrero interviews Sarah McNamara, author of Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South, winner of the National Women’s Studies Association Sara A. Whaley Book Prize, the Southern Historical Association Mitchell Award, the Southern Association for Women Historians Willie Lee Rose Prize, and a Bronze Medal from the Florida Book Awards.
From the publisher website: ”Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries who sought refuge against the shifting tides of international political turmoil during the early half of the twentieth century. Historian Sarah McNamara tells the story of immigrant and U.S.-born Latinas/os who organized strikes, marched against fascism, and criticized U.S. foreign policy.”