Meet Katherine Leung

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Katherine Leung. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Katherine below.

Hi Katherine , thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.

I get my optimism from many different sources. The first is my family and where I live, which I see interlinked in so many spiritual ways. My husband and I moved to the countryside after a lifetime of living in cities, escaping wildfires, and record-breaking hot summers as the result of climate change. Covid and deteriorating social institutions led us to want to regain control of what little we can – our food, our home, our family.

I absolutely love living in the woods, surrounded by nature and growing things to eat. Looking out the window gives me joy in ways I could have never imagined. I love our home and the family we are growing together. I learned what it means to belong to the land and to put down roots. I also learned how to be patient and the simple delights of a small and timely harvest. To live in a land that you feel your future interlinked with changes your appreciation of how you perceive art. I always thought poetry about nature was unrelatable. After all, they did not discuss social unrest or anything “real” to me. However, after being in nature I “get” art about beauty and I am, too, delighted by the smell of lilacs in the spring and how snowdrifts look in the forest. So, maybe my optimism comes from being privileged to live in a place with seasons!

I also feel a strong sense of optimism about my culture. My artwork and curatorial projects all deal with my culture, and I feel optimistic about how the ways people perceive themselves can change, adapt, and grow. My magazine is an anthology of works by a wide range of people with diverse opinions on what it means to be Cantonese. It’s not just my perspective nor a single perspective, nor the one spoon fed to me as a child. I’ll talk more about this later, but as a child, I wasn’t proud of my culture. I thought that because I didn’t have the language skills, I wasn’t able to self-identify. I let the limiting beliefs of elders in how to “be” Cantonese define me. I thought you were either Asian or White, and that there was no in-between.

I do a lot of community building work and when I listen to how young people interact with their own culture and hear how they identify, I feel optimistic about the future. The queer and BIPOC communities that I am a part of give me a glimpse of what futures are possible. So I’m optimistic about how things are already changing.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am the editor of Canto Cutie, an art and literature magazine about the diaspora. I started it in 2019 and I’m currently working on the eighth volume. Each issue is over 100 pages and filled with interviews with Cantonese writers and artists. We accept submissions from artists and writers all around the world that identify as Cantonese and publish those too. The interviews are all translated into Chinese and English. Since the project began, we’ve printed the work of over one hundred artists from over ten different countries. Most of the artists are from Hong Kong, and countries that speak English such as the US, UK, Canada, and Australia since there are many Cantonese people abroad living as first or second generation immigrants.

The Cantonese diaspora has roots in Hong Kong, Southern China, and other Southeastern Asian countries, but there are large Cantonese communities in former commonwealth countries. Cantonese speakers were often part of the first wave of immigrants to construct the historic Chinatowns present in large cities today, such as New York, Vancouver, and San Francisco to name a few. So Canto Cutie is a magazine about Cantonese people in all those places because it is a compilation of their works and words.

Cantonese is a variety of Chinese with over 82 million native speakers with a culture very different from Mandarin speakers. Due to civil unrest, self-identifying and linguistic pride is more important than ever. The magazine attempts to reflect the diversity of identity and experiences across the diaspora.

The latest volume was the Queer Issue, featuring over sixteen queer artists. There was an interview with poet Daniel W. K. Lee from New Orleans; Charlotte Mui, a witch and tarot card reader that recently relocated to the UK from Hong Kong; Steven Kin, a trans ceramic artist making art about their hometown, Detroit; and Tsz Kam, a queer artist in Texas who recently created the amazing walls at the new Meow Wolf Grapevine location.

I’m especially proud of that volume because I also worked with an intern, Allie Heffner, who helped me curate, promote the latest issue on social media, and even attend an in-person independent press event together. I had never really worked with an intern, so that was really fun to hear a different perspective on how I do things, but also be able to teach them skills to start their own indie publication, if they wanted to. Allie has since then moved on but attends Rhode Island School of Design so I’m really excited about everything she is doing and will accomplish.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

A quality that made a huge impact on my journey was learning and knowing my self-worth. I started getting interested in independent publications while I was in school. This was a significant time for me because I received conflicting messages about my worth and ability, which I let define me for far too long. When I was in fourth grade, I won a school-wide writing contest and scored the highest possible score on a writing standardized exam. At this time, writing was about creativity and imagination, so I felt confident about my ability to make imaginative stories come to life.

In middle school, writing became more about academics. English class was about interpreting literature, especially canonical works. I remember trying out for a writing University Interscholastic League team at my school and being cut from an elite few chosen to compete. I know in life, it’s not always about “getting what you want” rather the ups and downs, but it was the beginning of a downward trajectory about how I saw myself as a creative writer. I worked for the school newspaper and received very little guidance, mentorship, and was set up to fail. It was a popularity contest about who got to write the risque columns, and while the light was shone on a few, the rest of us were “left out”. Working on indie publications and my school’s literary magazine felt the same. In my “advanced” art class, we were constantly yelled at by the teacher. Looking back, being yelled at was something of a privilege because the alternative was being flat out ignored. I wondered a lot if I was a “writer” or “artist” at all. I wondered if working in a team was even for me, or maybe an exercise for smart people only. I wondered if my personality was the right fit for being creative.

As a student, I constantly felt like my future was determined by other adults. Crazy teachers, despotic adults who had no business teaching children, and other personalities were so overwhelming for me to deal with as a kid. I now know so, so much better, but it was rough getting through all of that. I cried a lot in school. I felt dumb almost every single day. It took at least ten more years for me to realize that all of it was damaging to a child and the way to build myself back up was just to believe in myself. I had to provide opportunities for myself to grow. The swirl of unnecessary drama and heartbreak that many kids endure is so messed up beyond repair. I hope not to replicate the constant disappointment with the youth that I interact with.

Another quality that was impactful to my journey is having the courage to just say, fuck the system, and start it yourself. I wasn’t given opportunities to flourish and I had to create them myself. I didn’t find success nor even friendship or comradery in the school newspapers or programs run by adults I didn’t trust. In university, I encountered a lot of student-run programs, which I find, philosophically, much more aligned to what I was looking for. As a young person, power dynamics between the teacher and students played a huge role, and that’s why I strive to create egalitarian communities where everyone has a say, even the littlest members with the quietest voices.

After graduating, I worked as a teacher for over six years. With groups of students, I brought what I lacked in my own schooling experience. In my first year of teaching, I led a group of fourth graders to produce their own school-wide literary magazine. When I taught middle school art, students were art curators and given autonomy to make decisions that affect themselves and others. Students made their own group coloring books and we got to use them again and again for fun. I really loved bringing these ideas to life in the classroom, led and facilitated by students. Although I was a teacher, I saw my role as just providing the space, time, and container for these ideas to develop and conversations to happen. I also started Canto Cutie, outside of my teaching career, at this time.

And lastly, the quality that I think is most impactful in my journey is recognizing each task or trial as a lesson, and knowing when to move on. I loved teaching and empowering youth. I no longer teach in public schools because it’s not a sustainable career for me due to the mass shortages, stagnant wages, lack of material support, and deteriorating leadership from the top down. I was sad to leave, but I had learned so much about student-led groups and feel inspired to do this again in different contexts.

The same principle shows itself again and again in Canto Cutie – with each volume I learn a new method of curating, or editing, or building community. And I’m quick to adapt and continue doing what’s best instead of lingering on practices that don’t suit me. I used to fund the magazine through sales, now it’s through grants. I used to stick to a rigid publishing schedule that burned me out, and now it’s on my own timing. I used to sell primarily at zine festivals, but now that those avenues are no longer lucrative nor worth my energy, I choose very specific events to attend and don’t just sign up for every single one that comes my way. We are four years out from the the post-Covid appetite for snail mail and online ordering, and the excitement of new events has dwindled. I’m appreciating the phase it took Canto Cutie through, and I’m learning to grow into a new business and creative model.

I also stopped trying to join existing writing and art groups, but rather started intentional ones that are firstly rooted in community and sustainability. This is the last quality that got me to where I am, and I’m happy here. Canto Cutie started as a magazine but has grown to other in-person projects and partnerships. I co-organize a monthly Queer Art Club in rural Vermont which provides free dinner to participants from immigrant-run restaurants. I meet new people, young and old, to build this with. We are moving in the direction of member-led education and compensating our instructors, even as young as seven years old.

I also help run a monthly Cantonese Club, which started out as an opportunity for conversation practice, but has grown to mean so much more. In the least diverse state in the US, we have grown to over 20 members, meeting monthly at restaurants in the Chittenden County area for Cantonese conversation practice. The club’s growth is driven by the necessity to preserve our minority language and culture. Our membership comprises multi-generational Cantonese families who are committed to creating a strong sense of community, affinity, and sustainable traditions.

Beyond language revival, the club exists to promote bottom-up decision-making and provide educational resources that are not readily available within the predominantly white and monolingual Vermont community. I bring my skills as a grant writer to boost this community and help ensure that it will last for a long time. I hope this story inspires others to start a club, wherever they are, regardless of what already exists, because you’re going to need people to thrive.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

Like I mentioned, you’re really going to need people to survive. Living as a diasporic person really taught me that. I’m part of a few diasporas, and I learn from history. Minority populations would have never survived or thrived if it wasn’t for their community. Rituals and traditions keep it going, but they had to adapt and be open to change.

My advice for anyone who is feeling “trapped” by their community is to start something new. In many places, it’s dangerous to be alone. You can find the people that are like you to build the more sustainable, longer lasting community that will outlive the capitalism and imperialism. It truly comes down to making friends and dreaming with them.

We’re at a particular time in space and history where many things are tugging at our energy and limited resources. So much of life is a struggle. Believe me – I feel overwhelmed a lot. I choose to form relationships that embody what a future free of oppression will look like.

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