USA Africa Dialogue Series - This Falola’s Book Is Truly Sweeter Than Salt

This Falola’s Book Is Truly Sweeter Than Salt

By Babafemi Ojudu

There are scholars who write books.

There are scholars who build schools of thought.

And then there is Toyin Falola—a phenomenon who seems to manufacture books with the effortless rhythm with which akara sellers fry bean cakes on a Saturday morning.

Every time one thinks he must surely be slowing down, another book appears. Then another. Then three more. Before one has finished reading one title, Professor Toyin Falola has already edited a volume, written a monograph, supervised doctoral dissertations, delivered keynote lectures on three continents, and received yet another international honor.

His productivity defies ordinary explanation.

His intellectual energy is astonishing.

His influence on African scholarship is immeasurable.

For more than four decades, Falola has occupied a rare position in the world of ideas. He is not merely one of Africa’s most prolific historians; he is one of the continent’s greatest interpreters. Through hundreds of books, essays, lectures, and interventions, he has chronicled Africa’s past, explained its present, and challenged its future.

Yet, for all his formidable academic achievements, one of my favorite Falola books remains one of his most personal: A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt.

If you have never read it, I urge you to do so.

Few books have made me laugh as much.

I have read it three times.

I own two copies.

I have given away three others as gifts.

Whenever I find myself weighed down by the burdens of life or the anxieties of our troubled nation, I often return to its pages. It possesses that rare quality found only in great writing: the ability to entertain, educate, and heal simultaneously.

The book is an autobiographical masterpiece.

Part memoir.

Part cultural archive.

Part social history.

Part comedy.

Part philosophical meditation.

In its pages, Falola recreates the Ibadan and Yoruba world of his childhood with such vividness that one feels transported into another time.

The characters leap from the pages.

The smells linger.

The sounds echo.

The stories refuse to leave your mind.

Only an observant child who became a great historian could have written such a book.

Falola notices everything.

Nothing escapes him.

Not the market women.

Not the hunters.

Not the traditional healers.

Not the gossipers.

Not the drummers.

Not the tricksters.

Not the priests.

Not even the eccentric characters society often ignores.

I still burst into laughter whenever I remember his portrayal of Iya Leku Leja and the fascinating world she inhabited. In my Ekiti country, we call such traders oniwosiwosi—those remarkable women who deal in dried animal parts, roots, herbs, and all manner of mysterious ingredients for traditional medicine and rituals.

Only recently, while driving through Oje Market in Ibadan, I encountered several such traders displaying dried animal heads and other strange wares. Instantly, my mind travelled back to Falola’s pages. That is the power of great literature. It permanently alters how we see the world.

The distinguished Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo captured the essence of the book beautifully when she wrote:

“Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information.”

She went further:

“The only other volume A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt reminds me of is Ake by Wole Soyinka. What is it about these Yorubas?”

What indeed, Ama?

Perhaps it is because the Yoruba world remains one of the richest reservoirs of oral traditions, poetry, proverbs, folklore, performance, and memory on the African continent.

And Falola is one of its finest archivists.

What distinguishes him from many scholars is his refusal to treat culture as a museum artifact. He understands that culture lives in people. It breathes through language. It survives in stories. It travels in memory.

His writing rescues countless details of African life that modernization, religious dogma, and globalization are rapidly erasing.

That is why A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt is more than a memoir.

It is a preservation project.

It is a cultural monument.

It is a defense of memory against forgetfulness.

Indeed, one of the tragedies of contemporary Africa is that many young people know more about medieval Europe than they do about the communities that produced them. They have been taught to dismiss indigenous knowledge systems as primitive and traditional practices as irrelevant. Entire worlds of wisdom are disappearing before our eyes.

Books like Falola’s push back against that amnesia.

They remind us who we are.

They help us understand where we come from.

And they equip us to navigate where we are going.

For this reason, I believe educational authorities should seriously consider works such as A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt as recommended reading in our secondary schools and universities. Young Nigerians need books that reveal the complexity, humor, beauty, contradictions, and wisdom embedded in our cultures.

They need to encounter African life not merely through textbooks but through stories.

And few storytellers do this better than Toyin Falola.

Beyond the book itself stands the remarkable figure of the author.

At a time when many academics retire into comfortable obscurity, Falola continues to produce knowledge with astonishing vigor. He has become a global ambassador for African scholarship, mentoring generations of researchers while ensuring that African voices remain central in conversations about Africa.

His career demonstrates what disciplined curiosity can achieve.

His life is proof that intellectual labor is itself a form of nation-building.

And his body of work stands as one of the greatest archives of African experience produced by any living scholar.

If future generations seek to understand Africa in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, they will inevitably encounter the name Toyin Falola.

His footprints are simply too large to ignore.

As for A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt, its title says it all.

It is sweeter than salt.

Sweeter because it nourishes memory.

Sweeter because it restores laughter.

Sweeter because it reminds us that our stories matter.

And sweeter because it comes from the pen of a man who has devoted his life to ensuring that Africa never loses its voice.

Read it.

Then read it again.

You will emerge wiser, richer, and perhaps, like me, laughing all the way to the final page.

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