Katarina Wong, MTS ’99

“I think a lot about the word ‘belonging,’ because it goes hand in hand with not feeling ‘enough of’ in terms of my own culture and longing to belong. For the two years I was at HDS, genuinely engaging intellectually and spiritually with some of the deepest questions that shape our humanity became an incredible lesson in owning where I am. HDS became a community I felt I belonged in. I think that’s the core of HDS for me—that belonging and exploring the expression of human experience.”

Katarina Wong is a writer, artist, and curator and is the associate director of fellowships at The OpEd Project. With a Cuban mother and Chinese father, she is the first generation of her family born in the U.S. Her writing and her artwork merge themes from these cultures as a way to understand the immigrant experience and her cultural inheritances.

HDS, NYC, and the Impact of the Pandemic

I graduated from HDS with a master of theology studies degree within the world religion track and with a focus primarily on Buddhism. After almost 20 years in New York City, I left after five months of the pandemic and moved to Santa Fe. In fall 2020, so many of us were working remotely, but I think we all thought we’d get a grip on this, and that life will go back to usual.  

I was working at Columbia University as program manager of arts administration at that time, and a friend invited me to Santa Fe knowing that New York was a rough place to be. I went to Santa Fe thinking I’ll get a little bit of a reprieve, but then we didn’t go back. As I was in Santa Fe working remotely, another opportunity came along that led me to change jobs. I am now the associate director of fellowships at The OpEd Project, which is an organization dedicated to elevating underrepresented voices in the most urgent, important public conversations happening.  

The unexpected upside of the pandemic was that it gave me time. Without access to a ceramic studio, I decided to focus on completing a memoir about renovating an apartment in Cuba and confronting my own cultural heritages, which had always been very uneasy for me. I grew up feeling I wasn’t Cuban enough, not Chinese enough, not American enough, though that I’ve come to accept that being in this liminal space between the three cultures is a place in and of itself—one I can find respite in.  

Religion, Spirituality, Art, and the Relationship with Vulnerability 

Another thing that happened during this time was that my undergraduate alma mater, St. John’s College, started a series called Spiritual Journeys and invited me to speak about my own spiritual journey. I centered my conversation around something I had been thinking about when I was at HDS: How, as an artist, do I talk about art as I experience it in the studio as a nonlanguage-based experience with its own kind of logic? It’s always seemed like a question of translation, which fueled my interest in the limitations of language around these kinds of experiences.  

Before I went to HDS, I had been reading contemporary Buddhist writers. I realized Buddhism has a whole library around the limitations of language, not about art necessarily, but about the enlightenment process, which is a nonlanguage-based experience. There is language around it in the practices, the chanting, and the ritual, but there’s a gap between how far language can take you and the experience itself. That gap became interesting to me, and how sometimes we prioritize language over experience. How much does language help one get into the experience of something beyond it? At what point do we just have to stop talking?  

I grew up being curious about my parents’ respective religions. In my father’s village, the religious practices were a blend of Taoism and Buddhism influenced home altars. Certain days, mysteriously, his mom would be doing something on the home altar, but he never knew what it was. It was part of the fabric of how everyone lived, but for my dad, it felt more superstitious than religious. 

My mother went to a convent school where she had very good experiences. Her beliefs are definitely influenced by her Catholicism. When she came to the United States, she continued to carry her beliefs but didn’t feel the need to be active in the church; however, my parents decided to send my sisters and me to evangelical school thinking that it would be stronger academically than public school. They probably thought a little religion can’t hurt you, but I had a very negative experience there. I became very cynical about Christianity, especially as it was expressed in the fundamentalist movement. I formed a lot of very strong judgments that I still can feel occasionally rising up in me today.  

Through my experience at HDS, those feelings began to soften and to shift. As I get older, I see that there is so much in religion, in spirituality, in art, in relationships that the only way to go deep is to allow yourself to be vulnerable. When I was in my 20’s my heart was more on my sleeve. Then, through lived experiences, I built defenses around that vulnerability. That’s the thing that I find needs to come down first: breaking that barrier, being vulnerable to one another and to oneself by letting yourself be vulnerable by asking questions about practices and being open to experiences that are not your own. Curiosity goes hand in hand with, or maybe leads the way towards, vulnerability. If you can be deeply curious about someone else’s experience and put judgment aside, that’s a way of allowing yourself to be vulnerable.  

Following the Unexpected Rhizome Path to a Place of Belonging

I chose HDS somewhat serendipitously because of a conversation I had with Sohyun Bae, a friend and fellow artist who had attended. I had never thought of divinity school as a place where you could ask the questions I had been grappling with, but we got into a conversation about the question of translation and nonverbal experiences, and she said I should consider Harvard Divinity School. So, in following one of those unexpected little rhizome paths, I applied and was accepted. 

When I got to HDS, I really had to confront my own biases. My time at HDS gave me an opportunity to rethink Christianity. Some of the courses I loved taking were around early church history and some of the esoteric movements. I found I was able to reconnect with Christianity, not in a way that I would consider myself Christian, but I gained an appreciation for the beauty and the meaning that this religion can bring to people. On that level I began to feel, who am I to judge? I let go of some of the antipathy that I had towards Christianity that I experienced as a kid. 

There’s something about the HDS community that was so welcoming and so intellectually curious, pulling people in from everywhere, studying all these different things that allowed me to be open. I remember at orientation the words, “you all belong here,” which reminded me of my reaction when getting my HDS acceptance letter. I thought, oh my god, I got the other Katarina Wong’s acceptance letter. I’m just going to show up and hope that she doesn’t show up. I was experiencing “imposter syndrome,” but as I made friends and I talked to other people I found out that everyone felt that way.  

I think a lot about the word “belonging,” because it goes hand in hand with not feeling “enough of” in terms of my own culture and longing to belong. For the two years I was at HDS, genuinely engaging intellectually and spiritually with some of the deepest questions that shape our humanity became an incredible lesson in owning where I am. HDS became a community I felt I belonged in. I think that’s the core of HDS for me, that belonging and exploring the expression of human experience.  

For Incoming Students and the Recently Graduated  

To incoming students, I would say, take advantage of everything that HDS has to offer, including the whole Harvard University system and consortium. I audited a lot of classes and attended many of the Harvard public offerings. I made it my full-time career for two years to follow my curiosity and see where it led. Use this as an opportunity to build beautiful relationships with others, especially those who you might not otherwise. My HDS experience and the people I met are what helps sustain me even today.  

For those who are moving into a post-HDS career, whether to get your PhDs, or on to chaplaincy and onto a career, the opportunity is to continue those relationships. Use your experience at HDS to consider the most important and pressing problems that we’re challenging today—social justice, climate change, inequity, and so much more!—and ask yourselves, How can we be in this world with integrity and with love? That is a super important question—one that HDS helped me to think about differently and to reshape those conversations with others.  

Interview conducted and edited by Denise Penizzotto; photos courtesy of Katarina Wong