In this Book
- Counting the Tiger's Teeth: An African Teenager's Story
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: University of Michigan Press
summary
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.
Table of Contents
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- 1. Ogun’s Gift
- pp. 1-27
- 2. Pouches and Pregnancies
- pp. 28-52
- 3. Compound of Mysteries
- pp. 53-77
- 4. Not Peace but a Sword
- pp. 78-109
- 5. Sworn to Secrecy
- pp. 110-145
- 6. Cocoa Politics
- pp. 146-181
- 7. Locust Invasions
- pp. 182-207
- 8. The Harmattan War
- pp. 208-237
- 9. Rebel Gangs
- pp. 238-271
- 10. The Fall of Agodi
- pp. 272-295
- 11. Esu at the Crossroads
- pp. 296-322
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 323-328
Additional Information
ISBN
9780472120710
Related ISBN(s)
9780472036561, 9780472119486
MARC Record
OCLC
902702229
Pages
344
Launched on MUSE
2015-02-03
Language
English
Open Access
No