Restaurant owner Joester Brassell first got her start as a head chef of fraternity and sorority houses on the Ole Miss campus, but she soon started to feel like she was destined for something more. She has been cooking since the age of 6 and knew she always had the skills to cook– all she had to do was realize she also had the gift of cooking.
“When I grew up and got married, I thought the husband made all the decisions,” Brassell said. “I didn’t know that I could make decisions on my own. I just thought the husband did because that’s how my mom and dad worked.”
It is because of mindsets like this that Brassell plans to speak as part of a panel hosted by the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies Wednesday.
The panel, “Women Creating Community Through Food: Intersectionality and Entrepreneurship,” will also feature two other women in the food industry and will be the first of three talks to take place over the month of March.
Kevin Cozart, operations coordinator and adjunct instructor of gender studies, will be the moderator for Wednesday’s discussion, which will feature Brassell of Mama Jo’s Country Cookin’, as well as Carla Rego of Lusa Bakery and Cafe and Dixie Grimes of Dixie Belle Cafe.
“We went with women that we knew from here and ones who ran businesses that, I don’t want to say get overlooked, but aren’t talked about or thought about in the same way as those as the businesses in the Square are,” Cozart said.
Cozart said this series of talks will be a way of honoring the work of women around the community.
“There’s a prestige factor with the title ‘chef,’ and when it’s not applied to women, it automatically undercuts what they do,” Cozart said.
Brassell originally went to school to become a beautician, but after 16 years of owning her own restaurant, it’s clear she followed the right path. As the owner of Mama Jo’s Country Cookin’, Brassell creates all her own recipes, helping feed the hearts of Oxford residents.
“There is no way to compare this restaurant to the restaurants uptown,” Brassell said. “They do not have the love or the kindness that we have. They are just there to make money, and I like the money part, too, but my biggest part is to get your soul.”
According to a press release, Jaime Harker, director at the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies, said these talks would be ideal at this time because of Women’s History Month.
“We wanted to establish a lecture series that highlights UM scholars, local members of the community, Mississippi entrepreneurs, artists and social justice advocates who are doing groundbreaking work in gender and sexuality,” Harker said in the press release.
The other Sarah Talks will take place next Wednesday, discussing the Women’s March on Washington, and the Wednesday after spring break, covering a study on student attitudes toward gender and sexuality and how they change over time.
“We really just want to encourage people to come out on Wednesday,” Cozart said. “It’s kind of our first time to do this. We just want to take a new approach; it’s going to be very informal and a good conversation, a good talk.”
This article was submitted to The Daily Mississippian from an advanced reporting class.
