Afghan Women Create Powerful Videos with StoryCenter’s Silence Speaks
StoryCenter Admin
Editor’s Note: Since 2009, the Afghan Women’s Writing Project (AWWP) has helped hundreds of Afghan women craft essays and poems and share them with the world. Because of these writings, thousands of readers each month hear directly from Afghan women on issues of cultural, political, and personal significance.
Our Silence Speaks initiative collaborated earlier this year with AWWP on an innovative, online digital storytelling workshop. We now proudly share a first glimpse of this cooperative project, launched to further amplify Afghan women’s voices and make them accessible beyond the 18% of adult Afghan women who read and write (UNESCO). In sessions conducted via pre-recorded webinar presentations, Skype calls, and emails, a small group of bilingual (Dari-English speaking) Afghan women learned the basics of writing for video, explored the ethics of photography and videography, crafted short, first-person narratives, and gathered and took photos and video clips to illustrate their work. Those participants who were not able to create original visual material received assistance with illustration and videography. Given limited personal access to video editing equipment and software in Afghanistan and the challenges of teaching video editing in an online environment, our Silence Speaks staff at StoryCenter edited the final stories in the U.S.
In accordance with AWWP’s privacy policy, all identifying information has been kept confidential. “Pen” names were used, faces were blurred in photographs, and we relied on AWWP partner and well-known Afghan activist Noorjahan Akbar to record the participating women's stories. We are happy to premiere an initial set of stories online with the following beautiful introduction from Noorjahan. We hope these brave voices will touch viewers deeply. We share the introduction now, in recognition of this year's "16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence" campaign. View our "16 Days of Women's Rights Stories."
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by Noorjahan Akbar, Free Women Writers
Recently, I had the chance to volunteer with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project and StoryCenter’s Silence Speaks initiative to assist with a collaborative digital storytelling project. Because it is the policy of AWWP to protect the privacy of its writers in order to ensure their safety in a context where speaking out about women's issues continues to put Afghan women at risk of harm, I prepared audio recordings for use in the short digital videos presented here. The experience was inspiring and a true example of what women are able to achieve when they decide to stand together and with each other.
As an Afghan woman myself, in these stories I find bits and pieces of my own life and the lives of women I have lived and worked with. Spoken in plain language, the authenticity of these stories is like a breath of fresh air in a world where the diversity of Afghan women’s own voices is often missing from conversations that others have about us.
Whether it is a story about the brutal violence families faced under the Taliban regime, a memory of street harassment, or a retelling of the universal sadness of losing a loved one, the narratives presented here bring to life the every day experiences of Afghan women in a way rarely seen before. They tell not only of the tremendous obstacles faced by Afghan women, and the nation as a whole, but also of the resilience that prevents the country from giving up to terror, war, and hopelessness.
Perhaps what I love most about these stories is that they are just that. They are real stories, by real women, written without the explicit intention to change dominant narratives about Afghan women, but doing so nevertheless. Whether in Afghan or Western media, Afghan women are often depicted as voiceless victims of abuse whose only story is oppression, but as much as violence is a reality for most Afghan women- and a reality that literally kills- there is more to us than that.
Perhaps it is because of the incredible amount of violence we face that our accomplishments, our writings, our history, and our voices matter. Perhaps it is because of the silencing impact of gender-based violence that amplifying the multitude of our stories, and experiences- of violence and apart from it- matters. Perhaps it is because of the way “Afghan woman” has become synonymous with the image of a maimed body that it matters so much that we must be the ones telling our stories- even if those stories speak of violence. Perhaps this is why it matters that we are the heroes and the subjects of our own stories. That we are continuing to speak through these stories and many many others, is a bold protest against voicelessness and against the black-and-white picture painted of our lives. We are here to say that we have a voice, and our entire identities should not and will not be reduced to stories of violence and war.
Noorjahan Akbar is a writer and human rights advocate from Afghanistan. She runs freewomenwriters.org.
Looking for more information about StoryCenter's work on gender-based violence and human rights? Find project updates on our Silence Speaks Facebook page.