Josefina Niggli
| birth_place = Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
| death_date =
| death_place = Cullowhee, North Carolina, United States
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| language = English
| nationality = Mexican, American
| citizenship = US
| education = Master's degree
| alma_mater = Incarnate Word College; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
| period =
| genre = drama, novels
| subject = Mexican history and culture
| movement =
| notableworks = ''Mexican Village''
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Josefina Niggli (1910–1983; birth name was
Josephine) was a
Mexican-born
Anglo-American
playwright and
novelist. Writing about Mexican-American issues in the middle years of the century, before the rise of the
Chicano movement, she was the first and, for a time, the only Mexican American writing in English on Mexican themes; her egalitarian views of gender, race and ethnicity were progressive for their time and helped lay the groundwork for such later Chicana feminists as
Gloria Anzaldúa,
Ana Castillo and
Sandra Cisneros. Niggli is now recognized as "a literary voice from the middle ground between Mexican and Anglo heritage." Critic Elizabeth Coonrod Martinez has written that Niggli should be considered on a par with such widely praised Spanish-language contemporaries as
Mariano Azuela,
Martín Luis Guzmán and
Nellie Campobello. She is thought to be the only Mexican-American woman to have a theatre named after her, the Niggli Studio Theater at
Western Carolina University.
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