Alice Wong, a disability rights activist and author whose independence and writing inspired others, has died. She was 51.<\/p>\n
Wong died on Friday because of an infection at a hospital in San Francisco, said Sandy Ho, a close friend who has been in touch with Wong\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
Ho called her friend a \u201cluminary of the disability justice movement\u201d who wanted to see a world where people with disabilities, especially those from marginalised demographics who were people of colour, LGBTQ and immigrants, could live freely and have full autonomy over their lives and decisions.<\/p>\n
The daughter of Hong Kong immigrants, Wong was born with muscular dystrophy. She used a powered wheelchair and an assistive breathing device.<\/p>\n
On social media Ho shared a statement Wong wrote before her death in which she said she never imagined her trajectory would turn out as it did, to writing, activism and more.<\/p>\n
We need more stories about us and our cultureAlice Wong, activist and writer<\/p>\n
\u201cIt 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,\u201d Wong wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alice Wong, a disability rights activist and author whose independence and writing inspired others, has died. She was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[17235,153760,23,153764,153763,153762,153758,126246,3026,94845,3,5284,153761,108,21,19,22,20,25,24,153759],"class_list":["post-294071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-activism","tag-alice-wong","tag-america","tag-assistive-breathing-device","tag-disability-justice-movement","tag-disability-visibility-project-blog","tag-hong-kong-immigrants","tag-john-d-and-catherine-t-macarthur-foundation","tag-lgbtq","tag-muscular-dystrophy","tag-news","tag-san-francisco","tag-sandy-ho","tag-social-media","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-year-of-the-tiger-an-activists-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}