AAPI Women Who Made History | Alice Wong

Instructions

[] AAPI Women Who Made History, pt. 2 [] [] Alice Wong [] [ Part 1: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/564558805/ ] [ Part 3: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/564936060/ ] [Disclaimer: contains music; switching between "slides" will cause color changes, perhaps especially stark from the first slide (the thumbnail with the title "AAPI Women [...]") to the second "slide" or vice versa and from the second-to-last "slide" (which is the slide that ends with "is currently working on new projects") to the final "slide" or vice versa.] [Content warning for the project: lack of representation.] Though I am not personally AAPI (specifically, I am a white person), I felt it important to highlight the role inspiring AAPI women have had in history (and to also do so beyond AAPI Heritage Month). Unfortunately, white-centric and male-centric narratives often erase women of color who have made immense contributions to various fields, such as, in this case, activism. Alice Wong is a disability rights activist, founder of the Disability Visibility Project, who has worked on several disability rights projects and aims to make space for other disabled activists of color. Learn more about her in the project by using arrow keys or by clicking / tapping to proceed through the slides. :) <3 [Alt Text] AAPI Women Who Made History: Alice Wong, Disability rights activist. Alice Wong (b. 1974) is a disability rights activist, founder of the Disability Visibility Project, who has worked on several disability rights projects and aims to make space for other disabled activists of color. Alice Wong was born in 1974 to parents who immigrated from Hong Kong to the U.S. She has spinal muscular athrophy (SMA) and stopped walking at a young age. Wong joined the Disability Interests Group at UCSF in its first year and graduated in sociology in 1997. In 2014, she founded the Disability Visibility Project, which aims to amplify disability media and culture and help disabled people record their own oral histories. She is also co-partner on the projects DisabledWriters.com, which aims to connect editors with disabled writers and journalists, and #CripTheVote, which encourages disabled people to participate in politics, among others. She was an Obama adviser who worked on the National Council on Disability for two years. She is also an advisory board member of the Asian and Pacific Islanders with disabilities of California organization. She is known for focusing on intersectionality (the way multiple forms of oppression compound) and turning down interviews to recommend other disabled activists of color to give them the opportunity of speaking. She doesn't want to "take up" space, but aims instead to create space. Growing up, she remembers that there weren't many other people that shared her disabled and Asian American identities in the spaces she was in. She had to slowly "[become] comfortable in [her] own skin." She wishes not to be a "unicorn" and says, "I hope that there are more of us and that people don’t extract our experiences just to educate themselves. It’s more about valuing us as who we are.” Under the Obama administration, she served on the National Council on Disability for two years. She has won several awards for her work and is currently working on new projects. Alice Wong: Disability Rights Activist