Amazing and insightful. I loved Disability Visibility, so I was pretty sure I was in for something special with this book by Alice Wong, and she sure did not disappoint!

I reviewed this on Book Riot's All the Books podcast. Here is a rough transcript.

This is the memoir of the founder and director of the Disability Visibility project, and it’s a memorable, thought-provoking, and often funny read.
It’s also a book that defies easy categorization.
And by that, I mean that in the introduction, Wong clearly outlines some of the ways not to talk about this book.
It’s not a quote ““harrowing” yet “triumphant” account of discrimination, ableism, humiliation, and pain.”
It’s not a book for allies to read to feel like they’ve scored points.
She also says that disability memoirs have been treated as the “zoo exhibit of the publishing world.”
In format, too, Wong rejects the standard.
She resists the idea that memoirs should have one central theme.
Instead, this is a collection of interviews, essays, comics, graphics, photos, and more
that range from discussing celebrating New Years in Hong Kong as a child, making the perfect dumpling,
the effect of the pandemic on disabled people, her journey to being a disability activist, and her own fictional obituary.
While her work as a disability activist is a big part of the book, it’s also about family, growing up as an Asian American disabled kid, storytelling, saliva art, nerd culture, and beautifully ripe peaches.
I read Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha before this, and I think they’re really interesting in conversation with each other,
Because they both discuss disability and networks of support,
But they have different imaginings of what those can or should look like.
As Wong explains, this is the hardest part for her as a disabled person who requires a lot of care for her daily life:
The fragility of the safety net, and how policy can change on a dime and affect so many disabled people’s lives in devastating ways.
She talks about the bureaucracy of the governmental support systems that do exist, including the “work of disability,”
which requires constant documentation and paperwork just to maintain the support they have.
She shares her rage at the shortcomings of these systems, and at how disabled people are often dismissed from cultural conversations,
Even when, in the case of the pandemic, they are experts.
One interview describes how news channels shared expert advice from astronauts and submariners about surviving isolation, without considering that maybe the people who have had to be isolated in their homes for medical reasons long before the pandemic might have something relevant to add.
There was also one fact that was repeated several times in the book, but that it actually took me that many times to read it correctly, because apparently my brain just couldn’t process it:
During shortages of ventilators, the New York State Department of Health ventilator allocation guidelines allowed doctors to take patient’s personal ventilators away from them and give them to someone else.
So someone who had come in with the ventilator they own that they rely on to breathe every day could have that removed from them, despite it being life-threatening, to treat someone else whose breath is apparently more valuable.
These policies of eugenics were incredibly common during the height of Covid hospitalizations, and they put disabled and chronically ill people who were already vulnerable to Covid itself in even more danger.
While Wong discusses a lot of iimportant and infuriating things, the personal tone and variety of formats kept me completely absorbed,
And I laughed out loud at her sarcasm and dry humour .
I also appreciated the broad view that Wong takes, and the way she sees how systems of oppression are connected.
In her imaged obituary, she says, “Alice lived to see the abolition of carceral institutions such as psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons,” because she sees those connections and is fighting for all the people affected by them.
If you want to rage against ableism and enjoy sarcastic humour and reading about food that will make your mouth water, I highly recommend this one.
I feel like I just scratched the surface talking about this book and everything it explores.
And that’s Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong.

*3.75*
this was such a great read!! if you had asked me before if I knew a lot about disability politics and activism, I probably would've said yes. I WOULD'VE BEEN WRONG. I honestly couldn't believe how little I knew about this topic, and this was such a great primer, featuring essays and interviews across various topics.
Because this was a compilation of Alice's essays and interviews, it could get a little bit repetitive, and some of them were more interesting to me than others. but overall, would HIGHLY recommend.

Such an important topic and such an incredible gift Alice Wong has offered readers in this book. Highly recommend!

What a great text to introduce my students to intersecting issues of ableism, access, and power. Alice Wong's memoir centers issues and truths that will make those who continue to grapple with the aforementioned to feel seen and heard. It will also shed light on how we can all do better. Some will shy away from the memoir's experimental structure, but Wong is never one to follow the norm.

A thought-provoking and necessary collection of essays and interviews about many facets of living with disability. I loved the multimedia approach to this book - the photographs, recipes, twitter threads, etc. It added so many supplementary details to this funny and well written scrapbook of essays. Definitely a book I will recommend.

It breaks my heart to say that this memoir was not for me. It is more of an essay collection, including transcriptions of various interviews/presentations/podcasts etc. I think if I knew that it was an essay collection going in I would have enjoyed it more. I still adore Alice Wong, and want to be her friend. I did appreciate all of the insights into disability justice, and the equal rights that I had not considered. There are takeaways that I will carry with me, but I just wish it would have been more of a memoir. Overall I would say reading Disability Visibility is still the superior way to learn about disability activism, and 100% think every human should read it.

While I definitely consider this to be a must-read, I do not consider this to be a particularly enjoyable read for me in terms of how the book was formatted. This is not a "traditional" memoir and Wong states so in the introduction, but I was unable to connect with how the collection was structured and specifically because of how expansive what was included in this collection. From emails, interview transcripts, lists, and essays, Year of the Tiger contains a wide range of different mediums within this book and context or additional background would have been helpful in terms of transitioning from one section to the next. I still stand by this being a necessary read but I did not find this to be an easy read, but not because of the topics explored but rather how it was formatted.

Year of the Tiger is such an inspiring, emotional and thought-provoking memoir of Alice Wong. Prior to reading this book I wasn't aware of Alice Wong. The book was also educational at times. I truly believe representation matters, and there is something inherently beautiful in someone sharing their story of the human experience in such a vulnerable way.

Alice Wong has written a revealing memoir,drawing us into her world.Sharing with us her life as a disabled member of society.Reading about her life in her voice is a real look into the struggles the fights to live and thrive.Alice has a strong personality a voice that was completely engaging a memoir I will be sharing.#netgalley #knopfdoubleday.

I love a memoir in general but this one. Wow. I feel privileged to be living in a time with Alice Wong and privileged to read her stories. This memoir is heartfelt and moving and fascinating. I’m grateful for the work Alice does for the community and that she shared this particular book with all of us. Will definitely be finding a way to work this into my work with college students.

I am so happy my friend, colleague and amazing person, Alice Wong, published this memoir. It’s not an easy read because while Alice knows how to have fun she also attacks subjects as diverse as education, work, access, staying alive, and eating as an disabled activist Asian American woman of color.
This might be the golden age of disability activist memoirs. This is different than inspirational disability memoirs. While inspiration might be one result of many of these memoirs--from Haben Girma’s Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law to Riva Lehrer’s Golem Girl: A Memoir to Nina G’s, Stutterer Interrupted: The Comedian Who Almost Didn’t Happen to Jan Grue’s I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir, and many more—it is not a primary goal. In Alice’s case she might say “F U” to be labeled as an inspiration. She doesn’t pull punches and she didn’t put out a typical memoir. We learn a lot about Alice but not in a linear fashion. Some of the book is reprinted essays, many from her Disability Visibility Project blog. Alice became a well-deserved superstar in the Disability Rights and Culture worlds with this project, begun in 2015 to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. She partnered with StoryCorps to tell stories from the disability rights world. Some of the essays in this book come from the StoryCorps interviews. Much of the book revolves around the Coronavirus pandemic and how it has impacted the lives (and deaths) of individuals with disabilities, including those like Alice who use technology, such as a non-invasive ventilator, to breathe and survive. People with disabilities have been creating and figuring out ways to thrive and survive living and working at home for many years. That makes some of us “oracles” and Alice describes why in several chapters.
This memoir is full of information, reflection, interviews, drawings, food, and cats, among much more. Alice, like the rest of us, is a complicated and complex individual. Her goal, she often writes, is supporting other people, especially disabled people of color, to get the word about their own life and experiences, out into the world. This memoir is one way of doing that because she shares the spotlight of this book highlighting the lives and work of many others.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in Disability Rights and Culture.

Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. The Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong is an important book because it shows how the disability, or to borrow a phrase, crip community is left out of important decisions, laws and policies that affect them more than able-bodied people. While reading, it also made me realize that there are things I can do to make access easier for people in my own life. This is interview heavy, so some things get repeated often, that would be the one negative.

REPRESENTATION MATTERS!!

This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022 and it sure did not disappoint!! Long-time disability rights' activist Alice Wong has written an incredibly heartfelt and honest memoir+.

More than your typical disability memoir, Alice's book is a collection of essays and interviews that touch on sooooo many important issues. She talks about her early life as a child born to Chinese immigrant parents and diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. She was constantly in and out of the hospital and had to undergo multiple surgeries. She also talks about life as a person dependent on life-saving machines, government assistance and the importance of authentic representation in media.

What I really connected with though was Alice's experiences as a person dependent on a ventilator and later a feeding tube, who was particularly vulnerable during the pandemic. Few people truly understand the precarious position those of us who were under 65 but still incredibly high-risk faced while waiting to get vaccines that could mean the difference between life or death.

In my opinion this was one of the best books about ableism and living with a disability. I particularly enjoyed the essays on her life in high school, being denied theatre classes because the teacher didn't even give her the chance to participate or fighting for funding for necessary support workers.

A must read for anyone who has dealt with similar issues or anyone who wants to better understand what a significant portion of the population has to deal with on a regular basis as funding for people with disabilities continues to decline and come under attack.

Much thanks to @PRHAudio, NetGalley and the publisher for early digital copies of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Favorite quotes:
"There's something incredibly affirming about seeing yourself reflected in popular culture."

- YEAR OF THE TIGER is not just Alice Wong's memoir, but also a look back at decades of disability rights activism and thought, along with a look toward the possibilities of the future.
- I loved the scrapbook feel of this book. Rather than a straightforward memoir, Wong collects excerpts from past interviews and published essays and op-eds along with vignette-style memories of her childhood, art, and poetry.
- Wong showcases both the hardships and the joys of disabled life, highlighting the importance of community and making sure she's crystal clear that the obstacles she's encountered are because the world isn't made for disabled people, not because of a lack of any kind of the part of disabled people.

In <em>Year of the Tiger</em> Alice Wong presents a scrapbook of her life and career as a disability rights activist. The book is filled with an eclectic array of documentation, including interviews, essays, poetry, drawings, and more.

On one level, this book's content and format are admirable. People with disabilities are often silenced, and it is refreshing to read Alice Wong's strong and undiluted opinions on ableism, being Asian in the United States, and other concerns. As she writes, "every issue is a disabled issue". On the other hand, after a while the complete portfolio gets to be a bit much. Wong is at her best in essays and blog posts, but the lengthy, often redundant, interviews and podcast transcriptions made my eyes glaze over.

In other words, this collection's ability to hold one's interest will depend on one's level of tolerance for all things Alice Wong.

I received an electronic pre-publication copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I was not compensated in any way.

A creative collection of writing by the remarkable Alice Wong who has lived fully and with astounding resilience. The author is fierce and unapologetic. The memoir is intentionally messy - meant to bring the readers on a journey of a progressive neuromuscular condition rather than providing a fairy tale, against all odds hero story as seen in many disability memoirs.

YEAR OF THE TIGER |

You know Alice Wong from #DisabilityVisability the project she started in response to the fact that StoryCorpus did not include many/any disabled stories.

In YEAR OF THE TIGER, Wong shares a compilation of thoughts, short form essays, doodles, interview and podcast transcriptions, poems, satirical stories, and notes that span 20+ years. What comes to shape is a live journal based in resistance and activism that Wong is forcing readers to think about.

To Wong, storytelling is activism. Telling a story, one's POV, that is markedly so different from what able-bodied people think is a form of resistance, saying I'm here and I'm glad I'm here. You should be glad I'm here as well.

There is a whole gamut of what Wong covers, growing up in Indiana, high school, gritting her teeth despite the lack of support from teachers while experiencing a worsening in her muscular dystrophy. Her memories around Lunar New Year, visiting Hong Kong. Applying for Medicaid. The struggles and continuous vulnerability that the disabled community face with each 'advance' and 'setback' of policy changes. Freedom and bodily autonomy. Living and surviving every damn day, especially during the pandemic. On how much disabled people can teach able bodied people and how we need to provide better access for those currently not included as a form of liberation and justice for all. Also, her love of cats :)

Year of the Tiger is an incredible mosaic-style memoir comprised of essays, interviews, illustrations and memoir vignettes by disability justice leader Alice Wong. Wong’s writing is frank and funny, written in a way that exemplifies the persona of her podcast work. After reading the collection she edited, Disability Visibility, it was such a pleasure to get to know her story, including a childhood of persistence and adaptation, of the denial of admittance to a drama class that fueled her earliest activism, and her supportive family. The interviews included provide important context and detail about her work, as well as current conversations about accessibility. One of my favorite moments of the memoir is when Alice writes of her future self, projects the achievements coming and even the strength of her legacy.

Year of the Tiger is one of the best memoirs I have read this year. Alice Wong shares her experiences through essays, transcripts of interviews, art, and photos. I really appreciated how Wong didn’t shy away from her frustrations with ableist society as well as showing moments of joy.
Thank you to Netgalley and all involved for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review..