San Francisco-based activist recognized as 2024 MacArthur Foundation Fellow


San Francisco-based writer, editor and disability justice activist Alice Wong was recognized by the MacArthur Foundation this week with one of its prestigious fellowships for her work on increasing representation of people with disabilities.

Wong, 50, was born with spinal muscular atrophy, where nerves in the brain and spinal cord break down, causing progressive weakness and atrophy in the muscles. As a disability rights advocate, she uses storytelling across various media platforms to share her own experiences and broadcast other people’s stories to reveal how ableist attitudes, policies and practices marginalize people with disabilities.

“The systemic ableism that I and millions of us face every day tells us that we don’t matter, that our lives are too expensive and not worth saving,” Wong said in a video introducing herself as a 2024 MacArthur Fellow. “I want to change the way people think about disability from something one-dimensional and negative to something more complex and nuanced.

“There’s such diversity, joy and abundance in the lived disabled experience. We are multitudes.”

San Francisco-based writer, editor, and disability justice activist Alice Wong was recognized by the MacArthur Foundation this week with one of its prestigious fellowships for increasing the representation of people with disabilities. (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)
San Francisco-based writer, editor, and disability justice activist Alice Wong was recognized by the MacArthur Foundation this week with one of its prestigious fellowships for increasing the representation of people with disabilities. (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation) 

Wong founded the Disability Visibility Project in 2014, which focuses on lifting up the voices of people with disabilities, sharing how their experiences are affected by their overlapping racial, ethnic and gender identities. It started as an oral history project where disabled people interviewed each other, but has now expanded to include a podcast, a blog, social media, arts projects and spaces for connection and community building.

Wong — one of three sisters — was born in 1974 in Indianapolis after her parents left Hong Kong and immigrated to the U.S. earlier that decade. Experiencing life as one of the few Asian American students and typically the only physically disabled student in the class, Wong has said she felt like she stuck out in unpleasant ways, leading to struggles with internalized racism and the urge to blend in with the crowd, according to her biography at the National Women’s History Museum.

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