Alice, the person
Alice Wong was a prolific force to be reckoned with. I always wondered if we had the same 24 hours in a day.
With many people covering Alice’s impact and legacy, the Alice I want to remember is the woman behind all the bodies of work. The super blunt, funny, and empathetic human that I was able to be friends with for a little while (8 years?), who introduced me to the feeling of access intimacy.
Some random anecdotes:
- When we first met, Alice lived with her family, and she told me that while people often think of her mom as the caretaker, “I take just as much care of her as she does of me.”
- In that vein, Alice loved to host people and bond over food and drink (so it sucked once she had to switch to a feeding tube). Of course, she had plastic straws at the ready too.
- Alice hated when people got her pronouns wrong – she’s so careful with us, her queer friends, and it’s RIGHT THERE in her email signature (twice, even): she/her. She was proud of her womanhood and had entered a fashionista and lipstick era in recent years.
- Alice and I bonded over being the solo organizer of our respective orgs. “I’m just a person trying to coordinate and do all the things,” I explained. She nodded and repeated it back: “I’m just a person — Disability Visibility is just me.”
- Alice and I often felt the pain of collaborators suddenly ghosting on time-sensitive emails. And though I mainly sent Alice casual check-ins, she’d always respond within a day.
- Alice’s handwriting is a messy scrawl that I like to characterize as free and unconstrained, with a side of occasionally illegible. I don’t get much snail mail, so I was pretty sure when things came from her, but still had to reference older cards when the signature had extra flourish.
- Alice was very into Star Trek and got super excited when Star Trek: Discovery came out. When I said I hadn’t seen it, she offered to share her streaming password (though I didn’t follow up).
- The few pictures I have with Alice are all thanks to her asking / reminding me to take some. With our bodies being travel-adverse, in-person time was rare, as I’m in Portland and not San Francisco. Alice made sure we’d have photographic mementos.
- Alice and I were planning to hang out in 2020 when COVID hit and my flights were cancelled for lockdown. I did make it back to the Bay Area briefly in 2023, but she happened to be in the middle of moving chaos, and it was a no go.
Alice could have just been my friend, but she supported my work as well by boosting Disabled And Here on social media (the camaraderie of Disability Twitter was beautiful in its heyday) AND becoming its biggest patron over the years. She would just show up in my inbox and offer grants (PLURAL). And though Alice’s plate was always full, she’d still tell me, “Please reach out too anytime you need support or would like to vent.” It’s a level of trust and care that my C-PTSD brain still finds overwhelming.
Alice raged against an ableist world and never took her time for granted. I want to be thankful about the life she lived, but really, I’m just cycling between angry and bereft.
Alice, if there’s a next life, I hope yours is filled with culinary delights and an abundance of joy, along with some actual decent fucking rest. Sending all the love.