The Immigrant World of Ybor City
Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985
by Gary R. Mormino
and George E. Pozzetta
This reprint of Gary Mormino and George
Pozzetta's classic, The Immigrant World of Ybor City, makes available
once again the wonderful story of the vibrant community of Italians, Spaniards,
and Cubans that grew up around the cigar industry in Tampa, Florida, at the dawn
of the 20th century.
Focusing on the Italian experience in this multi-ethnic city, Mormino and
Pozzetta explore interactions among immigrant groups--as rivals, and as friends
with common concerns. As they demonstrate, the extent to which immigrant groups
cooperated in Ybor City was remarkable, in large part the effect of immigrant
workers' strong sense of class consciousness and solidarity.
Interweaving the themes of class, culture, and community, Mormino and Pozzetta
recreate a world of cigar factories and their lectores, men who read
aloud from novels, radical publications, and newspapers while the tabaqueros
worked, rolling and cutting cigars. It is also a world of trolley cars, bolita
peddlers, and mutual aid societies, a world where people read daily from a
trilingual newspaper, La Gaceta, and spent their free time at
clubhouses like El Centro Espaņol or cantinos like L'Unione Italiana.
And it is a world of turbulent strikes and chronic conflict between the "Latins"
and Tampa's native "Anglos."
Drawing on newspaper articles, public and government documents, institutional
and private papers, Federal Writers' Project interviews, and the authors' own
interviews with hundreds of Ybor City residents, The Immigrant World of Ybor
City reveals a fascinating portrait of one of America's most celebrated
ethnic communities.
Gary R. Mormino, Duckwall Professor of History at the
University of South Florida in Tampa, is the author of Immigrants on the
Hill: Italian-Americans in St. Louis, 1882-1982.
George E. Pozzetta, who died in 1994, was professor of history
at the University of Florida in Gainesville and the editor of Pane e Lavoro:
The Italian American Working Class and, with David Colburn, America and
the New Ethnicity.
1998. 384 pp. 6 X 9.
Notes, bibliography, index.
ISBN 0-8130-1630-4Paper,$17.95
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"Impressively researched and stylishly written,
The Immigrant World of Ybor City chronicles the lives of Tampa cigar workers. . . . This work also captures a notable history that was shared by Spaniards, Cubans, Jews and Germans." --
Tampa Tribune-Times
"A compelling attempt to assess the
relationships over the last century among class, culture, and
community in the forging of the Italian experience in Ybor City.
. . . The wide range of private and public documents, . . . the
extensive use of oral testimonies, and a good mastering of
anthropological and sociological tools place the book within the
best vein of the new social history."-- Reviews in
American History
"An impressive book that has a great deal to offer those
interested in the complex relationships of class and culture in
the formation of communities. . . . A tour de force."-- Hispanic
American Historical Review