NEWSByZack Eaton
THU NOV 20Brooklyn Brewery Supports: Mai HuangThis year, we’re proud to launch Brooklyn Brewery Supports, a new initiative created in partnership with actor, model, LGBTQ+ activist, and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative board member Angelica Christina. Instead of a Pride campaign, we’ve taken direct action by sending $1,000 each to twenty-five trans, non-binary, and two-spirit New Yorkers in need, while uplifting their stories throughout 2025. At a time when these communities are facing escalating discrimination, anti-trans legislation, and even violence across the country, we believe the most impactful way to stand in solidarity is by sharing resources and amplifying voices that deserve to be heard.
Mai Huang is a queer trans artist and one of this year’s Brooklyn Brewery Supports recipients. Originally from China, Mai came to New York at 18 and found both their artistic voice and a community to care for. As a manga artist, Mai works in detailed pen-and-ink worlds—and outside the studio, they volunteer across local food distribution sites, supporting neighbors in Mandarin and helping maintain community fridges they once relied on themselves.
For Mai, community care is a way to build belonging, especially in a place that can feel uncertain for trans and international artists. Financial support helped them stabilize during a difficult moment and secure the visa that allows them to stay, work, and continue showing up for others. In our conversation with Mai, she reflects on her beginnings in community organizing and gives a special message.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Brooklyn Brewery: Tell us about your work as an artist.
Mai Huang: For my personal work, I’m a manga artist by trade, so I’m working on multiple manga titles and webtoons. I like background art and traditional pen and ink, black and white. I love details. So that’s what I do as my career as an artist. But I’m also working on a fringe beautification project with Bri. This was granted by The Laundromat Project.
BB: How did you get involved with this fridge beautification project?
M: For a bit, I had trouble paying my rent and had trouble just paying for groceries. So I was involved in these food distros and food drops as someone who needed food. That really, really helped me. But, because I go there and I take, I don’t just want to take, I want to offer my labor and my time at these places.
So slowly through that, I got more and more involved in community organizing, knew more and more people, took on more and more responsibilities. It felt nice because as someone who’s international, it’s hard to feel a sense of belonging or home or just like, where is my place in this world?
I volunteer at many local food distributions. One of them was at a church and another at a different place called Collective Focus. I want to be involved and just help my community in any way I can and with the specific skills that I can. At these distributions we have community fridges outside and there’s a lot of wear and tear on those.
My fridge paintings are not my usual style, but they’ve very colorful, very expressive. I want the community to feel like they’re involved. One of the fridges I painted was just like, “hey, everyone, grab a brush. Let’s all put something on here.” I just want it to be colorful, welcoming, and to show that joy that you have. I painted many fridges to create something that would attract people and would have people want to put their food in and people use them freely.
BB: What made you interested in community organizing?
M: I was born and raised in China and it’s very different. I was homeschooled as a kid, but in a way where my mom just decided to pull me out of school and had us travel China together. It was not radical in the Western sense of the word, but it was radical in a way where one day we work on the fields, another day we cut weeds, and then we would learn about Daoism.
We also had couch surfers who would come about every week to have a talk. They’ll talk about their experiences. They will talk about things like, “oh, I biked every single country in the world” and that kind of stuff. I think that really informed me in understanding just how big the world is and just how many possibilities there are. I hope I can eventually become someone like that, someone who inspires the next generation.
BB: How did the support from Brooklyn Brewery help you?
M: Good news. The $1,000 I got went towards my visa application and I got through, I have my O-1 visa. I’m here for another three years, let’s go! But, I wouldn’t have needed that money to fund my visa if the application were even just under a different administration.
Normally, it’s a very streamlined process. As long as you got everything correct, you can do it. Now, everything’s unsure. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Also don’t include that you’re trans in the application because you’re going to get rejected.
So in the application, I used he/him pronouns. I had to pretend to be something I’m not to get, get this application done. And, you know, errors occurred and I had to spend a ridiculous amount of money to really fast track that application. It was incredibly time consuming. So, not a good process. It’s an uphill struggle, but hey, being trans is cool and fun.
My community is trans so that I’m shielded from all of that. You know, transphobia is the default. So it’s not the best. But you know. I still feel better that I can live as myself. There’s lots of struggles for trans people—bodily struggles, internal struggles. But I still believe that this is better than any alternative.
BB: Why is it so important to help the trans community directly?
M: So much of the support for the trans, and/or queer, community is lip service. We’ll put you in the background of some movie and you just have to take that. So just literally being like, “what does trans people really need help with?” “Oh, hey, here’s a check. Hey, go live your best life” is literally, I think, the best way to go about it because a lot of trans people face many different struggles, but financial support is a super big struggle. Medication and cheap surgeries aren’t cheap. And even for someone like me who doesn’t do all of that, sometimes parents are not the most supportive, including my own. I have to be able to fend for myself in order to live. When a parent has financial power over you, they get to dictate who you live as. Once they pull the funding, there’s nothing you can do. I need to be fully financially independent so I can make the choices that I want. And that is the story of many, many trans people. We are forced to be independent at a very, very early age so having that bit of money just really helps.
BB: How are you celebrating yourself right now?
M: For me, I’m developing a new relationship with my body. In my own trans experience, I was not kind with my body. I’ve been trying to run or run away from it my entire life, because as a kid, I just don’t know what’s wrong with me, you know? Transitioning solved a little bit of that. But a lot of the unhealed childhood resentment with my body is still there. So I’m trying to celebrate my body by being very nice and very kind to it, by treating it gently and with kindness and patience.
BB: What would you say to someone in the trans community who’s trying to hold it all together right now?
M: Hold your head up. It seems bleak online—I know how online you trans people are, but really, it’s not as bad as the media makes it out to be.
When you go outside, when you meet people, when you build those communities, you are doing radical love. You are performing radical feminism by loving your community, by loving each other, by supporting each other. Reach out to a friend to say hi, just hang out. Just trans people hanging out, having fun together, that is radical. Trans existence is radical. You can fight the system by existing. Just existing.
BB: What’s something you would want people to hold with care about trans lives?
It’s more than just the pronouns, right? We’re just regular people. We have the exact same experiences, we do all the same things, we work nine to fives. We don’t want that extra tension, treat us like normal people.
And also, my message is: let queer people be cringe. We, like everyone else, are cringe and losers. Let us be cringe. So that’s my message. I’m the most cringe.
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