I'm really not sure what I expect here... but it was interesting. Felt like an informative paper from high school. A bit of an info dump with some personal perspecitve. It felt rather strange that it was narrated by someone else though. ( )

Disclaimer - I like Angelina Jolie. I think that she's an amazing woman, a great actress and classier than certain people who feel the need to name-drop her in every other interview. That's partly why I read this and the other was that it gave me a significant push into Asia that I needed for my challenge.

Anyway, before Brangelina and all the kids Angelina Jolie was recruited as a UN Goodwill Ambassador for Refugees and as part of her duties she went travelling around the world to different areas to talk to displaced people. This book is her diaries during those trips and her thoughts and experiences. Almost from the start you warm to her, even if you didn't like her. The book is written such as we would write - chronicling little things and snippets of conversation as she discovers how different life is. There are little points, barely mentioned, where she realises that a boy she had spoken to was killed, or where she watches children pick litter in the street to earn money, or sees children being sold into the sex trade at the age of 5 or 6 because they can't afford not to or where she's told how gangs would come in and make family members amputate each others limbs, or sees children carrying guns where you can feel how it affects her. It's not done in a gratuitous 'oh woe is me' way, but in a way where, no matter how brief the image is, it sticks with you.

At one point in Cambodia she mentions how she and her friend went to a museum and in it they show pictures of some of the atrocities committed and she lists some of them and explains how she had to leave such was the effect it had on her.

In another account she went to Pakistan to speak with Afghan refugees. This is before 9/11 and she says that afterwards she donated money to the Afgahn refugees and as a result she received death-threats because people couldn't differentiate between Afghanistan and the Taliban. That stuck with me because even now I still think that some people fail to make those distinctions.

I know a lot of people don't like her, but I think reading this you can understand her stance on life and why she adopted the kids that she did. I just think it's something people should think about.
( )

Jolie's journal entries on her visits to many countries as a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees are, indeed, notes, not a well-constructed travelogue or sociological narrative. For this reason, they serve as an entry point for further explorations, not as a definitive source. To be clear, I think that the intention behind publishing them was to expose readers to the content on refugees and the human costs of conflict and poverty. It is interesting to consider Jolie's growing personal sophistication and writing skill as these chronological accounts unfold. A good introduction or training text on international and human rights concerns. ( )

Her journal from her first trips working with the UNHCR. There was so much information almost all of it distressing. There is so much that our media doesn't tell us. In this book she writes about Afghanistan, Cambodia, Seoria Leone , and Columbia. There is so much work to be done. ( )

It was good and sad, but Angelina Jolie doesn't really have the writing skills to make it powerful. ( )