We recently connected with Katherine Leung and have shared our conversation below.

Katherine , appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project I have ever worked on is Canto Cutie, an art and literature magazine that I started in 2019. We’ve published seven issues and published the work of over 150 artists of the Cantonese diaspora. We’re now preparing for our eighth issue. The magazine can be read both digitally and in print.

Canto Cutie contains the work of Cantonese artists and writers. Cantonese is a variety of Chinese with over 82 million native speakers with a culture very different from Mandarin speakers. The diaspora has roots in Hong Kong, Southern China, and other Southeastern Asian countries. There are large Cantonese communities in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. Cantonese speakers were often part of the first wave of immigrants to construct the historic Chinatowns present in large cities today.

This project is meaningful to me in many different ways. The first being the personal need to self-identify. To me, there couldn’t be more diversity within the Asian American label. There are over forty countries in Asia, with hundreds of languages, religions, and ways of life, not to mention that experiences of growing up in the US varies so much city by city. I grew up in the suburbs of North Austin in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, at the beginning of a population boom due to high tech companies previously based in Asia relocating to Texas. I was surrounded by Asian-Americans. The high school that I graduated from boosted a demographic of 40% Asian-American students and this number continues to grow today. We were the children of educated and upwardly mobile tech professionals from Asian countries, first generation Americans with parents from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore India, Pakistan, Iran. Our experiences and expression of culture were varied, from the food we ate to what we did on weekends, and an even larger divide existed between first and second generation Americans from the same “home” country. All this to say that an identity signifier like Cantonese helped me draw distinction between myself and others, and define who “my people” are.

Mainstream narratives of being non-white in America didn’t always apply to me. For example, I’ve experienced brief periods of feeling othered or different, but most of the time, I found home in my community and in my identity. I attended a Chinese church with services in Cantonese, but spoke English with people my age. My upbringing was intertwined with my family’s faith so I feel affinity towards other Asian diasporic individuals who have their cultural and faith identity interlinked. I took traditional Chinese dance, attended and subsequently failed out of Cantonese language school, and saw myself represented in media all the time. It was to outsiders of my church and community that I would have to explain what being Cantonese meant – and it meant community, having family in Hong Kong, and it meant a culture distinctly different from the identity labels of Chinese or Asian-American.

Canto Cutie is meaningful for me personally because it’s a concerted effort to bring the worldwide Cantonese diaspora together. I know my relationship to the US may be similar to a Cantonese speaker living in the UK, for example, so highlighting those stories is important in Canto Cutie. I have family living in Brazil, Mexico, and Taiwan, that I feel a connection to more than I do other Asian-Americans, which is why I wanted this magazine to celebrate those similarities, rather than relying on mainstream labels to tell the story for us.

Canto Cutie also identifies that English is a uniting language in the worldwide Cantonese diaspora, which also makes it different from any publication before. It’s exciting to discuss and think about an identity that many hold, but perhaps were never given permission or space to explore. A publication in English also identifies the real trauma of language loss and assimilation, representing our demographic spread in predominantly English speaking countries, the product of British and Chinese imperialism.

Cantonese is so intertwined with Hong Kong culture, and during a time of rapid political and social change for the small island, I also think it’s important to preserve and publish stories of creators who have a connection to the place before, during, and after. Canto Cutie does that and allows room for all perspectives. Working on Canto Cutie, growing the readership, collaborating with new artists to promote different causes and arts-centric events makes Canto Cutie by far the most meaningful project I have ever embarked on.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Katherine Leung (pronounced “Learn”) and I currently live in Vermont. I grew up in a few places around the US, including Arizona, Texas, and California, but consider the Green Mountain state my home since I have put down roots and started a family here. Prior to starting Canto Cutie art and literature magazine, I worked with many groups of people on independent and regional publications. Print and the words, photos, artwork, and commitment to reporting have always interested me, though I’m more invested in small grassroots collaborations rather than pursuing journalism on a professional front.

In high school, I worked for the school newspaper and designed the centerspread with Photoshop creations of my own. These newspapers were coveted for the coupons to the local sandwich shop they contained on the backpage. Our school also ran a small literary arts journal that I submitted a lot of work to. At university, I took photos for the annual yearbook and citywide newspaper. As a quiet artist that was just excited to be a part of a community, I found myself as a historian for many student-run organizations as a photographer and someone who loved recording and then sending out meeting minutes.

After college, I worked as a teacher for over six years. At an elementary school, I led a staff of eight student editors to curate, edit, and publish the school’s first literary arts journal. At a middle school, I championed virtual art exhibitions during distance learning. As a Fulbright English lecturer in Russia, I helped judge and edit student articles for publication. I’ve reviewed Russian language books for an academic publication for three years. I served as Editor and Chief for a niche Asian American zine project. Above all, I have always loved the marriage of art and text in tangible ways, in beautiful books and periodicals you can hold in your hand. I don’t know when exactly I got into “indie publishing” but rather it has always been a part of who I am.

In addition to publishing Canto Cutie, a full-color, 100+ page professionally bound publication, I make small informative 8-page zines on various topics: cooking, community organizing, navigating racism, permaculture, and the outdoors. I make zines with my friends, about my experiences, and with my partner who I love to be outside with.

I print and publish zines to sell wholesale at indie bookstores that are interested in these niche topics, but also at zine festivals. I have been a part of the New England self-publishing scene in almost every capacity, tabling at the Boston Art Book Fair, Northampton Print & Book Fair, Watertown Zine Fest, Pioneer Valley Zine Fest, New Haven Zine Fair, and Bookstock. I also love that independent press is a world that values marginalized identities and those who are disabled, and involve a lot of events that allow virtual participation – I’ve hosted “virtual tables” and participated in online panels at festivals in Hong Kong, Tucson, Phoenix, Twin Cities, Austin, Albuquerque, San Francisco, San Antonio, Houston, Philadelphia, San Diego, East Bay, Bay Area, San Fernando Valley, Orange County, just to name a few. I’ve also given poetry writing and zine making workshops at local events to show that anyone can start a zine, at any time. You don’t need journalism or formal art or writing skills to get started. In fact, the less you know, the more fun you can have – and the younger you are, the sooner you can start.

I’m proud of the events and collaborations I’ve taken part of, because they’ve all added to the richness that is the indie publishing community. Zine-making has historically and will always be a platform for those who don’t fit dominant narratives. When mass publishing leaves a hole, zinesters and artists fill it with their own words.

I didn’t start Canto Cutie because I consider myself an expert in publishing. I noticed a gap in publishing and wanted to fill it. There were no prior publications in English about being Cantonese being shared internationally, so I wanted to start it.

I also didn’t want to be a stereotypical cut-throat editor like you see represented in movies. I wanted to form relationships and literally be friends with other artists I admired, and I use this platform to do so. In the process, I tried to minimize the things I didn’t like about the submission process to literary journals – the fees, the unspoken barriers to entry like education and linguistic dominance, the unfriendliness, the rigidity, the disorganization, the lack of promotion and follow-through. I wanted to be a part of a sustainable process that is open to change, improvement, and collaboration.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

There are many things a society can do to best support artists, creatives, and a thriving creative ecosystem. I think the most obvious is to continue funding creative projects and prioritizing new ideas. Funding an artist’s project opens them up to more possibilities. It validates their time and labor. It frees them up to live and think so they don’t have to create art for survival. I have really appreciated some of the funding mechanisms that exist in Vermont and New England, and while they have room to grow, I have seen some great organizations fund projects from emerging artists, rely on the community as curators and decision-makers, and try to return the capital to the community they had originally stolen from. There is so much that is problematic about institutional funding sources, but I see some wins, and while it’s not enough, with the right people making decisions, we will create the thriving arts ecosystem we dream of living in.

Another thing society can do to support a creative ecosystem is continue holding arts events that don’t fit any category. I want to push people past art shows at galleries and into the streets, to puppet parades and zine festivals and other weird times. Get rid of timed panels and formal readings but bring the words to murals, to Tiktok, to partnerships with schools, and other ways younger audiences can interact with print, art, and words.

To do this, artists and art organizations have to lean into collaboration, including people who have never been included, and move away from profit over everything. Collaboration mean being uncomfortable, getting messy, and relishing the process rather than the product.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I used to fund Canto Cutie and all my art projects on my own. I would sell magazines in order to fund the next print. It was exhausting and a lot rode on my ability to market and sell my product. It brought a lot of anxiety and the need to be perfect.

I wish I had learned more about grant funding from state and regional sources earlier on. I didn’t know that there was money sitting around waiting to fund projects like mine.

I hope all artists are able to find grants from their local and national funding sources. I learned a lot by attending info sessions. Once I wrote a successful application, it got easier to find more and write more, and as a result, receive more. So I wish I had learned about these resources earlier on so that I didn’t need to put so much of my own funds into my own art projects.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cantocutie.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cantocutie
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cantocutie
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cantocutie/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/canto_cutie
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqBAvB058zf_tTJf-W1_Ukg

Image Credits
Isora Lithgow Creative, Vermont Womenpreneurs, Benjamin Aleshire, Seven Days Vermont