Although Angelina Jolie is best known for her acting skills and old-school glamour, she has also published two books. The first was “Notes of My Travels” in 2003. The book is filled with journal entries that Jolie composed while helping with humanitarian relief efforts in countries like Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan and Cambodia. ‘Notes’ has been well received by people familiar with humanitarian work, such as scientist Jane Goodall, who wrote: ‘I was deeply moved by its descriptions of individual refugees struggling to live with dignity and hope, and I found his personal commitment to be an inspiration.”
Her second book – “Know Your Rights and Claim Them: A Guide for Young People”, co-authored by human rights lawyer Geraldine Van Bueren and published in 2021 – is also humanitarian-focused. As Simon Hattenstone explains in The Guardian, “The book sets out all of children’s rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by 196 countries, explains how to claim them and offers advice for young people who did.” The United States was one of the few countries that had not ratified these rights at the time of the book’s publication, one of the shocking facts that inspired Jolie to write it in the first place. She was also prompted to act after facing her own legal difficulties in the custody battle for her children.
In addition to these books, Jolie has written articles for several prestigious publications. In April 2020, she wrote an article for Time detailing how important it is to protect children from the pandemic. She also wrote two opinion pieces in The New York Times, one about her decision to have a double mastectomy and the other about her late mother.
