I was born into the Afghan culture — a private culture that encourages silence and secrecy.

I broke that silence when I wrote my first story for an online Bay Area magazine. Once the piece was published, words of persecution from my family and the tight knit Afghan community in the Bay Area haunted my life. At the time, I struggled with the choice between maintaining the code of silence as a young Afghan-American female and electing to speak. If I kept silent I feared critical and not-so-acceptable cultural practices would be left unwritten; if I spoke, my family and the community would label me as an Amreecayee (American) — a word used to describe sell-outs in Afghan culture. I elected to use the media to tell my story and that of Afghan-American women.

When I began my writing career as an Afghan-American journalist in the Bay Area, I did not know that what I was engaging in by being the writer and the participant was civic journalism. I have learned that civic journalism captures voices and perspectives that would otherwise be dead. In a post 9/11 world, these voices, especially in the immigrant communities in the Bay Area, are most critical to telling and capturing a complete story. Many reporters cannot penetrate the deep barriers of immigrant communities because of language barriers, therefore stories surrounding the treatment of women and children are not covered in depth. With civic journalism I hope that more of these stories will be told.

In August of 2001, while working in a newsroom in San Francisco at the age of 18, I started Afghan Journal, the first Afghan-American publication in the United States. A month later the world changed. Suddenly, Afghanistan was on the map and Afghans were in demand for interviews by the mainstream media. Reporters who knew little to nothing about Afghans in Diaspora were expected to be experts. As a result, there were problems with reporting news within this community with accuracy. Journalists who were not previously engaged in the community knew only to cover a 2-block span of Fremont Blvd. dubbed “Little Kabul.” Had there been a larger movement of civic journalists at the time, there may have been better coverage. Afghan Journal made it our priority to provide an outlet for a minority voice that is critical in a post 9/11-world. Many people heard about the Afghan-Americans who escaped war in Afghanistan, but what about those who were born in the United States and were faced with an unexpected identity crisis as neither country accepted them?

Today, I am a formally trained reporter and one of the first Afghan-Americans to graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I continue to cover the Afghan community in the Bay Area. I have found that the best stories I read about are those that come directly from writers most affected by the issues. I know the Bay Citizen will capture these rarely heard and often misunderstood stories and that is why I am a dedicated member.

Mizgon Zahir Darby and her husband Keith have both been Founding Members of The Bay Citizen since April of 2010. We would like to thank her for being our inaugural Voices author.

Learn more about Voices here.