Black History Month Spotlight: 'Counting the Tiger's Teeth'
Throughout February, the University of Michigan Press will be featuring several titles for Black History Month.
Counting the Tiger’s Teeth: An African Teenager's Story narrates a crucial turning point in Nigerian history, the Agbekoya rebellion of 1968-70. After dropping out of high school in 1968, Toyin Falola joined a peasant rebellion in his home country of Nigeria. Counting the Tiger’s Teeth is Falola's personal account of his experience with the rebellion, based on what he saw and heard, the activities he participated in, and what he suffered. The narrative provides unprecedented, even poetic, access to the social fabric and dynamic development of the farming communities in rebellion as they confronted the modernizing state. Falola reveals the rebellion’s ambivalent legacy, the uncertainties of which inform even the present historical moment.
“With this book Toyin Falola joins a band of distinguished and special historians who participated in the making of history they narrate…I found this book as enjoyable as Trotsky's history of the Russian Revolution. While the scale of the two historical incidents are different, the writing is as close to the guts and as stirring of the senses as any personal history can be. This book also distinguishes itself as a modern classic in which one culture (Yoruba rebellion) is successfully written in the language of another (English). A unique reading experience.” —Kole Omotoso
Counting the Tiger’s Teeth is now available in paperback at press.umich.edu. Receive a 30% discount on the paperback edition with code UMTIGERPB now through March 15, 2016.
