Mexican Village: Josefina Niggli’s Border Crossing Narrative

• Authors: Jadwiga Maszewska
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper presents Josefina Niggli (1910–83), an American mid-twentieth-century writer who was born and grew up in Mexico, and her novel Mexican Village (1945). A connoisseur of Mexican culture and tradition, and at the same time conscious of the stereotypical perceptions of Mexico in the United States, Niggli saw it as her literary goal to “reveal” the “true” Mexico as she remembered it to her American readers. Somewhat forgotten for several decades, Niggli, preoccupied with issues of marginalization, hybridization, and ambiguity, is now becoming of interest to literary critics as a forerunner of Chicano/a literature. In her novel Mexican Village, set in the times of the Mexican Revolution, she creates a prototypical bicultural and bilingual Chicano protagonist, who becomes witness to the rise of Mexico’s modern national identity.

Keywords

EN

Josefina Niggli; U.S.-Mexico borderlands; Chicano/a literature; Mexican folk traditions; biculturalism

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture
• Year: 2018
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 352-364

Dates

published

2018-11-23

Contributors

author

Jadwiga Maszewska

• University of Łódź

References

• Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute,1987. Print.
• Coonrod Martinez, Elizabeth. Josefina Niggli, Mexican American Writer. A Critical Biography. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2007. Print.
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• Gruesz, Kirsten Silva. “Mexico in America.” A New Literary History of America. Ed. Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Cambridge: The Belknap P of Harvard UP, 2009. 6–11. Print.
• Herrera-Sobek, Maria. Introduction. Mexican Village. By Josefina Niggli. Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P, 1994. i–xxv. Print.
• Lavender, David. The Southwest. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1984. Print.
• Niggli, Josefina. Mexican Village. Chapel Hill: The U of North Carolina P, 1994. Print.
• Stavans, Ilan, ed. The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. New York and London: Norton, 2011. Print.
• West, John O. Mexican-American Folklore. Little Rock: August, 1989. Print.

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/texmat-2018-0021