Activist Alice Wong reflects on 'The Year of the Tiger' and her hopes for 2023

For many Asian and Asian American communities, the Lunar New Year, celebrated in late January this year, represents a chance to start anew. It also comes with it a new zodiac animal: 2022 was the Year of the Tiger. In 2023, the baton passed to the rabbit — or for those in the Vietnamese community – the cat, a symbol of luck.

But, so far, this year hasn't felt so lucky. In the first three days, there were two mass shootings that directly impacted Asian American communities in California. Several days later, a video showing footage of Memphis police officers beating a Black man, Tyre Nichols, to death, was made public — reigniting calls for police reforms and further scrutiny of specialized police units. All the while, the Biden Administration is preparing to loosen more precautions around the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected older adults, communities of color and people with chronic illnesses or disabilities.

So NPR reached out to activist and writer Alice Wong, author of Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life, for her thoughts on the start of the lunar year — and her hopes for the rest of 2023.

Born in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Ind, to Chinese immigrants, Wong entered the world in the Year of the Tiger, 1974. Along with the characteristics of the tiger zodiac — confidence, ambition and strength — Wong's body also contained a mutated gene causing a progressive neuromuscular disease that slowly weakens her muscles. The doctors told her parents that she wouldn't live to the age of 18 — Wong is now 48.

Today she is a self-described "disabled cyborg," as she writes in her.