This memorial tribute aired in the November 20, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
Click the button above to listen.
San Francisco disability justice activist, writer, and MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant recipient, Alice Wong, died last week at the age of 51.
That was Imani Barbarin, disability rights and inclusion activist, who’s also known online as Crutches and Spice.
But in 1997, at 23, she moved to San Francisco to pursue a masters in medical sociology at UCSF, but had trouble completing it because of accessibility issues on campus. Eventually she did finish her degree, and ended up working at the University to help make it more accessible for other disabled students.
Alice founded the Disability Visibility Project in 2014 to amplify the stories of people with disabilities in relation to media and culture.
That project led to a podcast and a book of the same title. The Book is a collection of personal essays by writers who give their take on living with disabilities today.
So, to remember and honor Alice’s work we bring you this conversation that she had with KALW’s Jenee Darden, host of the sights and sounds show. It took place in the middle of the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, over zoom.
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That’s the voice of Doctor Alyssa Burghart, Associate Director of Pediatric Bioethics at Stanford talking about how Alice Wong impacted her work.
In 2022 Alice published a memoir titled “Year of the Tiger.” For our series New Arrivals she recorded a reading from the memoir using a text-to-speech app.
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Alice Wong died Friday at the age of 51. She is survived by her parents Henry and Bobby, her sisters Emily and Grace, and her two cats, Bert and Ernie.
And Alice wrote another letter- a message for her friends to post after her passing. You can read that here.
