{"id":1236,"date":"2013-08-28T17:07:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T17:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2013-08-28T17:31:03","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T17:31:03","slug":"afghan-womens-writing-project-enables-women-in-afghanistan-to-read-write-in-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2013\/08\/afghan-womens-writing-project-enables-women-in-afghanistan-to-read-write-in-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Afghan Women’s Writing Project’ Enables Women In Afghanistan To Read, Write In Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Leigh Cuen, dowser.org<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An adult literacy class, at Dust-e-Noor neighborhood, in Mazar-e-Sharif, in the northern province of Balkh. Dari is the Afghan dialect of the Persian or Farsi language. A total of 50 women attend the literacy centre, one of 7,000 such centers in the province. Nationwide, 48,000 women participate in the literacy program. Afghanistan. June 28, 2007. (Photo by: Majority World\/UIG via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite constant dangers, Afghan women\u2019s poetry continues to flourish. One outlet for women\u2019s poetry is Mirman Baheer, Afghanistan\u2019s largest literary society for women. Mirman Baheer operates in Kabul with over 100 members. Its members are generally educated and employed; they are professors, parliamentarians, journalists and scholars.<\/p>\n

Approximately 300 of Miram Baheer\u2019s members live in the outlying provinces — Khost, Paktia, Maidan Wardak, Kunduz, Kandahar, Herat and Farah — where the group functions in secret. Many who cannot safely travel to meet together listen to radio programs broadcast by Mirman Baheer and the Afghan Women\u2019s Writing Project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recruit only through word-of-mouth and delete any content that might be used to identify our writers,\u201d says Richelle McClain, director of the Afghan Women\u2019s Writing Project.<\/p>\n

The Afghan Women\u2019s Writing Project (AWWP) was founded in 2009. Today, 160 Afghan women across five provinces are enrolled in AWWP\u2019s workshops, including a new workshop for teenagers and a Dari writing program. While security is an omnipresent concern, dwindling financial support is one of their greatest challenges. \u201cWe just lost 75 percent of our funding because of the U.S. withdrawal,\u201d says McClain.<\/p>\n

In addition to radio broadcasts and writing programs, the AWWP collects oral stories from illiterate Afghan women, which are edited and published on the organization\u2019s blog.<\/p>\n

Before the 2014 elections in Afghanistan, the AWWP plans to partner with IFES Afghanistan (International Foundation for Electoral Systems) to promote political writings by local women through digital, print, and radio networks. They will also run special broadcasts featuring interviews with female candidates and programs about how election results will impact Afghan citizens.
\nFor many rural women in Afghanistan, these secret networks and the poetry broadcasts are their only form of education. U.N. investigations revealed that only 12 percent of Afghan women are literate.
\nBut, thanks to volunteer translators and journalists, contemporary Afghan women\u2019s poetry can now reach global audiences. For example, the June 2013 issue of Poetry magazine was dedicated to landays \u2013 vitriolic, two-line verses traditionally recited by Afghan women at the river, the well, or private gatherings.<\/p>\n

This collection came from years of investigative reporting by journalist Eliza Griswold. She journeyed to Afghanistan with photographer and filmmaker Seamus Murphy. On July 30, 2013 the Pulitzer Center will host \u201cI Am the Beggar of the World,\u201d a presentation of Griswald and Murphy\u2019s work at the Culture Project in New York City.<\/p>\n

A free exhibit at the Poetry Foundation Gallery in Chicago, Shame Every Rose: Images of Afghanistan, features many of these landays and images. The exhibit is open to the public through August.<\/p>\n

\u201cSharing this poetry could endanger the poets\u2019 lives,\u201d says Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine. \u201cStill, they gave these poems willingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

See also: Powerful Tech: New Innovations To Fight Rape, Murder and Atrocities<\/a>
\n<\/em>
\nThe tradition of landays provides some level of anonymity for women because they are collective. They are recited and shared rather than attributed to a single poet. Even so, in modern Afghanistan, poetry can be dangerous. Over the past year, several young Afghan poets were killed by their male relatives. A young Mirman Baheer member who called herself Rahila Muska burned herself to death in protest after her brothers found her writing poetry and brutally attacked her. Her real name was Zarmina. She often recited this landay over the phone to members of Miram Baheer:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou sold me to an old man, Father.<\/em><\/p>\n

May God destroy your home, I was your daughter.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Landays derive their power from shrewd layers of tension between the poet\u2019s inner and outer world. They can explore rage, sarcasm, irony, loss, separation and desire. Many of the poems are humorous, filled with bawdy sexual imagery.
\nWhatever the subject, a landay lilts from word to word in a short lullaby with scathing, layered meaning. These poems come from a long legacy of Afghan women\u2019s literature.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Afghan woman poet predates the American or European female poet,\u201d says Zohra Saed, an Afghan-American poet living in New York City. \u201cConsider the poet queen Rabia Balkhi.\u201d Legend has it this 11th century Afghan used her last drop of blood to write poems.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfghan women\u2019s poetry is unique because it must respond to create change,\u201d says Saed. \u201cWithin our communities and also to change outside perceptions. It is the poetry of witness, of trauma, of memory and of struggle to be seen as individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saed recounted the time she edited a collection of literature by Afghan writers around the world. Before it was finished, an American radio station published a CD of the collection without her permission. They listed her as the editor and printed a photograph of an impoverished child on the cover.
\n\u201cWhen people are interested in Afghan women\u2019s poetry, it is presented as poetry by the same women the world has imagined rescuing over the past 20 years,\u201d Saed says.<\/p>\n

She took legal action to recall the copyrighted anthology, then focused it exclusively on Afghan-American writers. \u201cThere were also women poets who were not part of the war,\u201d she says. \u201cWriters raised abroad, their aesthetics and poetic voice is very different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Afghan literature is fragmented by linguistic, cultural and geographic divides. Some of the world\u2019s most prominent Afghan writers live outside their fatherland and write in English. Many female writers in Afghanistan come from the urban elite, often educated in western universities. Poems by women in rural Afghanistan are rarely published. Groups like the Afghan Women\u2019s Writing Project and the Poetry Foundation are working to bridge this divide.
\n\u201cPoetry is not only for the classroom and elite art circles,\u201d says Share, editor of Poetry magazine. \u201cPoetry is an essential part of life, the only way these women can share their experiences. These poems are electrifying and relevant.\u201d He hopes readers will realize that, even in the digital age, poetry can wield tangible power.<\/p>\n

This post originally appeared on dowser.org.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ufeffDespite constant dangers, Afghan women\u2019s poetry continues to flourish. One outlet for women\u2019s poetry is Mirman Baheer, Afghanistan\u2019s largest literary society for women. Mirman Baheer operates in Kabul with over 100 members.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,20,90,5,17,49],"tags":[149,598],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-culture-and-literature","category-editor-selection","category-geography","category-women","category-womens-rights","tag-literary-society","tag-women","country-afghanistan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1249,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions\/1249"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}