Texas A&M History Associate Professor Dr. Sarah McNamara's book, Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South, has earned five awards, including the two most recent: the 2024 H.L. Mitchell Award from the Southern Historical Association as the leading title in southern labor history, and the 2024 Willie Lee Rose Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians as the leading book in southern history authored by a woman.
“When I was writing the book, I was writing with labor history and women's history audiences in mind,” McNamara said. “To receive recognition in both of those categories is incredibly meaningful to me."
The H.L. Mitchell Award celebrates books that offer contributions to the understanding of labor in the American South. Similarly, the Willie Lee Rose Prize acknowledges groundbreaking work by women historians that expands the depth of southern history, particularly on overlooked topics like immigrant communities and multi-generational struggles, as highlighted in McNamara’s book.
Ybor City is a cross-generational history of the Ybor City, a Cuban immigrant community now located in the historical district northeast of downtown Tampa, Florida. The book spans the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century, a time of significant political, social, and economic upheaval in the United States.
“It's a story of how people, places and politics become who and what they are,” McNamara said. “This small community on the Gulf Coast of Florida tells an important story of migration and transnational collisions of politics that had global importance.”
Ybor City, once known as the cigar capital of the world, was the center of the Cuban cigar industry in the United States from the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. It was founded in the 1880s by Vicente Martinez Ybor and other cigar manufacturers, and for the next 50 years, workers in the city factories rolled hundreds of thousands of cigars annually.
“Cuban immigrants saw working in the Cuban cigar industry in the United States as a way to create the political and labor-based movements that were under threat on the island of Cuba,” McNamara said.
McNamara aims to provide a more nuanced and human-centered approach to the history of Ybor City, specifically highlighting the community’s political activism, labor movements and the complex decisions made by its residents.
“I’m moving beyond a stereotype of what it means to go on spring break or to think about beaches by examining what it means to live in a place of industry, work, politics and migration,” McNamara said. "Through this multi-generational approach, readers share the experiences of immigrants to Ybor City, their children and then finally their grandchildren and can explore how each passing generation, none of which stands in isolation, all interact with each other.”
This approach holds personal significance to McNamara, as her own family history is deeply rooted in the story of Ybor City.
“My family is from this community,” McNamara explained. “When they immigrated to the United States around the turn of the 20th century, they came as Cuban cigar workers from the island.”
McNamara’s focus on Ybor City began long before she started research for her book. Her undergraduate studies at the University of Florida first sparked interest in the story of her family and the broader history of immigration in the region.
“As an undergraduate student at UF, we were required to take a senior research seminar” McNamara said. “During that period, I was fascinated by early indigenous histories and had submitted a proposal on this topic. My proposal earned a ‘C’ and I met with my professor to discuss how to improve.”
“During that meeting,” McNamara explained, “the professor didn’t address my proposal but, instead, asked me questions about my family and I told him about Ybor City. In turn, my professor asked a series of questions about immigration, labor, and civil rights that redirected the seminar paper and my areas of research interest. Until that conversation, I never thought about Ybor City as much more than a place where my family once lived. It turns out there was much more to the story.”
According to McNamara, “If I were to give advice to students it would be to go to office hours. You never know where those conversations will lead. In my case, one conversation changed my life.”
While McNamara’s connection to Ybor City influenced her work, she explained that learning to question what she believed she knew about a place that felt familiar was a lengthy and challenging process.
“History,” McNamara explains, “is something everyone believes they know, but reality lies beyond assumptions and is often hidden in what has been unsaid or lost for generations.”
McNamara opens her book with this process of rethinking and reorienting Ybor City’s history. A woman named Amelia Alvarez opens her book. McNamara learned of this subject from a newspaper clipping that featured a photograph of 5,000 women from Ybor who marched in protest of the rise of fascism in Spain, as well as across the globe and at home, during Spanish Civil War.
“This clipping was given to me by my grandmother when I was about thirteen years old,” McNamara said. “When my grandmother showed it to me, she indicated the women in our family who participated in the protest. One of those women was Amelia Alvarez — my great-great-grandmother and my grandmother’s favorite grandparent. From my memory, my grandmother did not tell me the context of the clipping or the history behind photograph. But, I remember that she seemed proud of our relatives as we looked at the image.”
McNamara says it took her years of research to understand the political and social import of the photograph but when she did it shifted what she believed she knew about Ybor City.
“The picture is a window into a world of women’s political lives and the ways local activism can serve as a platform for global movements," she said. "Ybor City was a once a site of work, a site of political movement making, a site of industry, and a site of international and cross border intellectualism. The photograph not only tells us much about the importance of combatting fascism to this community but of the longstanding generational principles that motivated this community’s actions.”
As she continued her research, however, McNamara’s understanding of the community expanded beyond personal anecdotes and even pushed her to wrestle with what she believed she knew.
“Over time, archival documents revealed that the idea of collective organizing and progressive politics isn't always a clear-cut dichotomy between good and bad,” McNamara said. “One of the more challenging parts of writing the book was finding a way to explain events in a way that holds people accountable for their actions while demonstrating understanding and empathy. When I figured out how to do that, what I believe emerged, and what I think resonates with many readers, is that the book tells a very human story. When historians, scholars, and readers take contradictions seriously, we can confront a more realistic vision of the past. This is hard because it means nobody is a heroine or a hero — including members of my family who are in the book."
If I were to give advice to students it would be to go to office hours. You never know where those conversations will lead. In my case, one conversation changed my life.
This approach was not just for academics, McNamara said, but also for those within the community. She wrote her book in a narrative style to resonate with a broader audience both in and beyond Florida. These decisions offer a deeper understanding of Ybor City’s history beyond local stereotypes and introduces one of Florida first Latino communities to scholars and casual readers alike.
“I wanted my mom, and readers like her, to be able to see herself and themselves when reading the book," McNamara said. "To do that, I worked to balance research with clear arguments and vivid story-telling. I wanted to introduce Florida in a way that honors the memories and lived experiences, those about whom I write, experienced the community. In my opinion, if you want to understand Florida —from its politics to its social structures to its Latina and Latino population — you must understand Ybor City.”
Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South, published by The University of North Carolina Press in 2023, is available on Amazon, for purchase in various formats, including paperback and e-book. It has also won the following awards: Sara A. Whaley Book Prize, National Women's Studies Association; Bronze Medal in Florida Non-Fiction from the Florida Book Awards; and Honorable Mention for the Best First Book in Immigration History from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.