A Salon Dinner Idea - The Sinners Movie
/“History is never simply about the past. Sinners demonstrates history has an afterlife with even more longevity than any vampire.”
There is so much to wrestle with as an American human right now. Where to even start that feels motivating and connective, as well as open-eyed and challenging?
That’s why I love this opportunity to combine an incredible new Vampire movie set in 1930s Mississippi Delta, historical and spiritual context and a dinner table of people to process and learn with!
Our family is hosting a Sinner’s Movie Salon Dinner with a few acquaintances the weekend following Juneteenth. This idea (and my deepening appreciation of this movie) grew out of my reading of Jemar Tisby’s Substack posts about the film. The more I learn, the more I find this movie both deeply disturbing and incredibly life-affirming.
I wanted to share our basic “plan” to help inspire other Salon Dinners around this movie!
Dr. Tisby offers two incredible resources you can draw from to ground and kick off your dinner conversation in his post, The Sinners Movie Is Now Streaming - by Jemar Tisby, PhD. Here’s how I can imagine using them:
Watch a short clip from the teach-in video with Jemar Tisby & Garrison Hayes together.
Choose something (a poem, an excerpt, a song…depending on where you want to focus) from The ‘Sinners’ Movie Syllabus - AAIHS. This is a curated offering of ways to delve into the multifaceted historical, cultural, and social contexts depicted in the film, and gain a deeper understanding of its deeply layered narratives.
Invite your guests to prepare by watching the movie itself ahead of time and bring a pocket-sized artifact which represents their own personal, cultural, or ancestral heritage. Use those for introductions.
Food? We haven’t quite figured that out yet. But we will for sure be playing the amazing soundtrack while we mingle!
Comment with your experience and thoughts! Have you seen the movie yet? Who do you know who might like to watch the film and talk about it? How could these ideas enrich your conversations and connections? What ideas do you have?
