Katherine Jinyi Li

Katherine Jinyi Li is a freelance journalist in Brazil covering international issues with an emphasis on migration, local entrepreneurship, and racial justice. When she's not chasing stories across borders, you can find her at the closest hip hop show or playing street soccer down the block. Li speaks 5 languages and gets her love of stories from a life of immigrant journey.
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Sylvia Zhao, 22, sits in her newly rented room in a townhouse owned by a fellow Chinese international student in Lake City. (Photo by Katherine Jinyi Li)

Are Chinese international students feeding Seattle’s real estate crisis?

by Katherine Jinyi Li
For some wealthy Chinese families hoping to park money offshore, sending a kid to study in Seattle and buying them a new house seems like a great investment.
Oct 3, 2016

5 Brazilian Portuguese phrases I wish we had in English

by Katherine Jinyi Li
Brazilian Portuguese may just have its own vocabulary for describing Brazil's own unique political climate.
Aug 17, 2016

Brazil’s Zika mothers are speaking out

by Katherine Jinyi Li
While health experts are still scrambling to explain the link between Zika and birth defects, a generation of new mothers fight to ensure that their children have a voice
Jun 28, 2016
Milena, age 16, says lowering the adult trial age will just add to unfair application of criminal law in Brazil: “A rich kid can steal and murder but pay bail and be out of jail easy, while a kid from the favela will be stuck in prison.” (Photo by Katherine Jinyi Li)

Failing and jailing our youth, from Seattle to São Paulo

by Katherine Jinyi Li
Brazil and the U.S. face surprisingly similar struggles with high incarceration rates and a school-to-prison pipeline facing poor youth.
Nov 23, 2015
A protester at the "March Against the Genocide of Black Youth" in São Paulo in 2014. (Photo by Katherine Jinyi Li)

Black lives matter movement resonates in Brazil

by Katherine Jinyi Li
Black Brazilians are looking to the Black Lives Matter movement in America as they plant the seeds for their own rise to justice.
Sep 22, 2015