SAN FRANCISCO
AP
—
Alice Wong, a incapacity rights activist and author whose independence and writing impressed others, has died. She was 51.
Wong died of an an infection Friday at a hospital in San Francisco, stated Sandy Ho, an in depth pal who has been in contact with Wong’s household.
Ho referred to as her pal a “luminary of the disability justice movement” who wished a world through which individuals with disabilities, particularly ones of marginalized demographics who have been individuals of colour, LGBTQ and immigrants, may stay freely and have full autonomy over their lives and selections.
The daughter of Hong Kong immigrants, Wong was born with muscular dystrophy. She used a powered wheelchair and an assistive respiratory machine.
Ho shared an announcement on social media that Wong wrote earlier than her demise through which she stated she by no means imagined her trajectory would end up because it did, to writing, activism and extra.
“It was thanks to friendships and some great teachers who believed in me that I was able to fight my way out of miserable situations into a place where I finally felt comfortable in my skin. We need more stories about us and our culture,” Wong wrote.
She advocated for “getting people out of institutions and remaining in the community,” Ho stated and her works — together with books she wrote and edited and the Disability Visibility Project weblog, which she began — shared her writing and voices and the views of others.
Ho stated Wong was a humorous individual and a hilarious author, not a simple ability. Her memoir “Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life” is crammed with humorous snippets but in addition humanizes incapacity, she added.
The legacy of Wong’s work is that folks with disabilities “speak for themselves and that nobody speaks for us,” Ho stated.
Wong was among the many 2024 class of fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, recipients of the “genius grant.”