Alice Wong: An Activist’s Life
Sunday, May 7 | 4:00 PM - 5:00 PMBrower Center - Goldman Theater
- ASL Interpreted programming
- Memoir
When Alice Wong, on the verge of and excited about the publication and promotion of her memoir Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life, suffered a major medical crisis last year, she was disappointed about the drastic change in plans . . . but then set about advocating for a complete overhaul of the personal care infrastructure on which she and approximately 14 million other Americans depend. As she put it in an opinion piece on KQED, “we must build a world that acknowledges our interdependence with one another so no one ever falls through the cracks.” Transforming her personal circumstances into a force for systemic change is nothing new for Wong, who has been at the forefront of the disability justice movement for years, even appearing at the Obama White House (for whom she served on the National Council on Disability) via robot technology. As the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project, Wong is dedicated to amplifying the stories of disabled people, and in Year of the Tiger, she movingly centers her own. Her multimedia volume traces her identity as the child of immigrants from Hong Kong and as a person living with progressive muscular dystrophy—through essays, fiction, and artwork she creates an entirely original volume that lies at the intersections of memoir and manifesto, balancing justifiable rage with wry humor.
Alice Wong will join the Bay Area Book Festival remotely; those who would like to ask a question of the author are asked to do so by emailing [email protected] no later than April 20 so that Wong can prepare her responses in advance using text-to-speech technology.
Book signing information: Bookshop West Portal, at the venue