I Would Prefer a Dignified Death to a Life As a Hostage in Silence: Afghan Woman Poet

In Afghanistan, many consider poetry a sin. And yet Afghan women are writing poetry, in secret. 

From the BBC:

"When we recite our poems, we remove our pain," says Seeta Habibi, Country Director for the Afghan Women's Writing Project, a group established with the help of writers living in the United States.

"We talk to the paper with our pen and we fight for our rights on paper," she explains. "Someday we hope we will win."

Threats from the Taliban in the west of Afghanistan forced Ms Habibi, the only female journalist in her province, to leave her home.

Karima Shabrang faced a similar fate in her village in the remote northern province of Badakhshan. Local elders condemned her as a bad moral influence for her romantic laments of love and loss.

"They said I should be got rid of. They meant I should be killed," she recalls in the simple mud brick home in the poor suburbs of Kabul where she now lives with two brothers who came to her rescue.

Full story here.