Counting the Tiger's Teeth

An African Teenager's Story

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Cultural Studies, African-American Studies, History
Cover of the book Counting the Tiger's Teeth by Toyin Falola, University of Michigan Press
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Author: Toyin Falola ISBN: 9780472120710
Publisher: University of Michigan Press Publication: November 14, 2014
Imprint: University of Michigan Press Language: English
Author: Toyin Falola
ISBN: 9780472120710
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Publication: November 14, 2014
Imprint: University of Michigan Press
Language: English

Counting the Tiger’s Teeth narrates a crucial turning point in Nigerian history, the Agbekoya rebellion (“Peasants Reject Poverty”) of 1968–70, as chronicled by Toyin Falola, reflecting on his firsthand experiences as a teenage witness to history.  Falola, the foremost scholar of Africa of this generation, illuminates the complex factors that led to this armed conflict and details the unfolding of major events and maneuvers. The narrative provides unprecedented, even poetic, access to the social fabric and dynamic cosmology of the farming communities in rebellion as they confronted the modernizing state. The postcolonial government exercised new modes of power that corrupted or neglected traditional forms of authority, ignoring urgent pleas for justice and fairness by the citizenry. What emerges, as the rural communities organized for and executed the war, is a profound story of traditional culture’s ingenuity and strength in this epic struggle over the future direction of a nation. Falola reveals the rebellion’s ambivalent legacy, the uncertainties of which inform even the present historical moment. Like Falola’s prizewinning previous memoir, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt, this engagingly written book performs the essential service of providing a way of walking with ancestors, remembering the dead, reminding the living, and converting orality into a permanent text.

 

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Counting the Tiger’s Teeth narrates a crucial turning point in Nigerian history, the Agbekoya rebellion (“Peasants Reject Poverty”) of 1968–70, as chronicled by Toyin Falola, reflecting on his firsthand experiences as a teenage witness to history.  Falola, the foremost scholar of Africa of this generation, illuminates the complex factors that led to this armed conflict and details the unfolding of major events and maneuvers. The narrative provides unprecedented, even poetic, access to the social fabric and dynamic cosmology of the farming communities in rebellion as they confronted the modernizing state. The postcolonial government exercised new modes of power that corrupted or neglected traditional forms of authority, ignoring urgent pleas for justice and fairness by the citizenry. What emerges, as the rural communities organized for and executed the war, is a profound story of traditional culture’s ingenuity and strength in this epic struggle over the future direction of a nation. Falola reveals the rebellion’s ambivalent legacy, the uncertainties of which inform even the present historical moment. Like Falola’s prizewinning previous memoir, A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt, this engagingly written book performs the essential service of providing a way of walking with ancestors, remembering the dead, reminding the living, and converting orality into a permanent text.

 

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