Disability rights activist and author Alice Wong dies at 51

This March 2024 photo provided by Sandy Ho shows Yomi Young, left, speaking with Alice Wong at Wong's 50th birthday party in San Francisco. (Sandy Ho via AP)

SAN FRANCISCO — Alice Wong, a disability rights activist and author whose independence and writing inspired others, has died. She was 51.

Wong died Friday because of an infection at a hospital in San Francisco, said Sandy Ho, a close friend who has been in touch with Wong’s family.

Ho called her friend a “luminary of the disability justice movement” who wanted to see a world where people with disabilities, especially ones of marginalized demographics who were people of colour, LGBTQ and immigrants, could live freely and have full autonomy over their lives and decisions.

The daughter of Hong Kong immigrants, Wong was born with muscular dystrophy. She used a powered wheelchair and an assistive breathing device.

On social media Ho shared a statement Wong wrote before her death in which she said never imagined her trajectory would turn out as it did, to writing, activism and more.

“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 “getting people out of institutions and remaining in the community,” Ho said. Wong’s works — including books she authored and edited and the Disability Visibility Project blog she started — shared her writing and voices and the perspectives of others, Ho said.

Wong was a funny person and a hilarious writer, not an easy skill, Ho said. Her memoir “Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life” is filled with humourous snippets but also humanizes disability, Ho said.

The legacy of Wong’s work is that people with disabilities “speak for themselves and that nobody speaks for us,” Ho said.

Wong was among the 2024 class of fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, recipients of the “genius grant.”

The Associated Press