No matter your age, your color or your creed, you still have to eat. And when you face someone across a dinner table rather than across lines drawn by your differences, you might make a friend.
That’s the premise behind Transformation Table, a series of dinners started by Tina L. Singleton nine years ago. Transformation Table’s June 20 dinner is part of the commemoration of the brutal slaying at Charleston’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church where nine people died at the hands of a racist gunman “This year’s theme is unity in the community, which is really our raison d’etre,” Singleton said in a recent interview.
The dinner, held at the Johns Island farm of third-generation Gullah Geechee farmer Joseph Fields, will be prepared by Gullah Geechee chef-advocate B.J. Dennis.
“It’s the perfect environment and setting to have this dinner and it’s also an opportunity for us to reflect on and honor and celebrate the legacies of the Emanuel Nine and continue with their message with grace and love and transformation,” Singleton said.
Circling back
The June 20 dinner marks a complete circle from the start of the Transformation Table.
Singleton moved to Charleston about a year after the shooting and attended a number of commemorative events, one of which was a talk by Bernice A. King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the talk, she challenged attendees to “find ways to love and understand each other, despite our differences, go looking to overcome hate to, go to each other’s homes, have dinner,” Singleton recalled.
Singleton once lived in Afghanistan as a disability rights and inclusion technical advisor where she would host dinners to bridge the differences between her and those immersed in local culture. Food became a bond and those dinners, along with the advice of King, sparked Transformation Table in November 2016.
“I met a woman at the College of Charleston and I asked if she’d be willing to host a 10-person dinner with strangers, and then another friend introduced me to our first chef, Janice Hudgins, formerly of Little Miss Ha. It was completely experimental, but everybody got along really well and they were really into the conversation, and so I started monthly home-based dinners,” she said.
Bridging the gap
The dinners, prepared by a host from the community or by a local chef, continued evolving to include a “tamada,” a term from the Republic of Georgia meaning “toastmaster.” In Georgian culture, the tamada’s role is to help bridge the gap between the past, the present and the future. The Transformation Table tamada gently leads the conversation and ensures that everyone is heard and that the conversation stays positive. There is no set agenda.
Singleton said the evening starts with a drink and a welcome from Singleton and the host followed by a talk from the chef about their heritage and what ingredients they will be using that guests might not be familiar with. Once guests are settled, the tamada usually asks people for their favorite food memory growing up.
“That’s when people start connecting, and the conversation jumps off from there,” Singleton said. “There is no specific topic for the dinners because I find that when you tell people what the topic is going to be, people have in their heads what they want to say and it becomes less about listening.
Instead, the conversation grows organically and I find that 99.9 percent of the time, the topics that come up are the ones that need to be discussed by that particular group of people.”
So far, the group has hosted 26 chefs from 21 countries and has had more than 700 guests. Some guests have stayed connected via a Facebook group or at an alumni gathering.
Singleton said there are moments during each dinner that stay with her.
“We had one dinner where an undocumented person was going through the process of getting a green card but couldn’t go on their honeymoon because they couldn’t leave the state. After the dinner, a guest told me that put a human face on the issue for her.
“We had a gay woman at the table who talked about how her very conservative, very religious mother had rejected her, and a Baptist minister at the table was very empathetic, and they wound up having a really good conversation. I know from these dinners that giving people space to ask questions without judgment and being shut down is really crucial.”
Singleton has since moved to Portugal, managing the dinners from there with help from Charleston-based staff and returning to the Lowcountry twice a year. She said she has had other states ask about hosting Transformation Table dinners and is working on a community toolkit to enable them to do dinners on their own.
More: transformationtable.org
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
