"[2] 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.
Niggli was born on July 13, 1910, in Monterrey, Nuevo León, into an expatriated Euro-American family from the U.S.[2] (her father, of Swiss-Alsatian descent, was from Texas, and her mother, who was Irish-French-German, from Virginia).
[6] As a teenager in San Antonio, and in spite of being an Anglo, she felt that she didn't belong and wished to be back in Monterrey; these feelings formed the basis of her first book of poetry, Mexican Silhouettes, published in 1928 with the help of her father.
[7] Niggli was hired during World War II by NBC International to write Spanish language messages for Latin American radio.
[3] She followed this in 1947 with Step Down, Elder Brother, the Spanish translation of which "cemented Niggli's reputation as a giant of Mexican literature within the Latin American literary world.
[13] While in North Carolina, she continued to write not only novels—her final novel, A Miracle for Mexico, was published in 1964[6]—but also radio and television shows, including The Twilight Zone and Have Gun—Will Travel.