The Americanization of Louis

By Louis Gutierrez

This memoir chronicles the author’s childhood growing up during the Great Depression and World War II. Louis Gutierrez was born to immigrants from Spain in Tampa, Florida, in 1931. Growing up in the Tampa suburb of Ybor City offered him a unique community of Spanish, Italian, and Cuban immigrants.

These families did not try to impose their culture or language on others, and while maintaining their traditions and language, they nevertheless felt it was important to learn English and become part of the melting pot that made all Americans free of labels.

The Americanization of Louis answers the question of what it was that his family and others did to assimilate and become Americans, of which some recent arrivals differed and seemed to resist.