Ashley Judd was in her hotel room after a shattering first day in Cambodia spent at some of the nation's notorious brothels and a genocide museum.
Checking her email, she found a note from a friend with "some innocent, touristy-type questions about Cambodia," Judd recalled. " 'Is there this, is there that, do they have Starbucks yet?' And I just sat down and furiously began typing, and everything that I didn't know what to do with began to pour out onto the page.
"'There's no Starbucks. But there's intergenerational trauma, sexual exploitation, malnutrition, preventable disease.' ... I just started to get it all out."
Judd didn't know it at the time, but she had started writing a book.
All That Is Bitter and Sweet(Ballantine Books, $26) was released Tuesday, forming a trio of Judd family memoirs, following those by her mother,Naomi, and her sister, Wynonna.
But Ashley's tome isn't about telling family secrets.
The book gives some perspective on events also recounted in Naomi's 1993 memoir, Love Can Build a Bridge, and Wynonna's 2005 book, Coming Home to Myself. But those and additional Judd family stories serve to contextualize Ashley's vigorous pursuit of social justice around the world.
"It was born as a reaction to witnessing human-rights atrocities and feeling like it became incumbent upon me to transmit the sacred narrative of disempowered people who had so willingly shared their vulnerability with me," Judd said Friday afternoon. "I felt like I would be betraying and failing them if I didn't take their stories and, as rapidly and on as broad a scale as possible, share them with others."
Sometimes Judd went straight to officials to tell them what she saw, but often she would write a diary entry and email it to friends. Those extensive journals, often from two hours or more a day of writing, became the basis for the memoir, which she co-wrote with journalist Maryanne Vollers, who also worked with Secretary of State and former first lady Hillary Clinton on her 2003 autobiography, Living History.
All That Is Bitter and Sweet has numerous touches drawn more from the news pages than from the celebrity tabloids, including a foreword by New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, who writes that Judd "uses her fame to focus attention on issues of vital importance to all of us, while giving voice to the voiceless around the world."
Not that everyone has seen that since the book has come out. Judd expressed exasperation that many media reports about the book have focused on sensational aspects, such as revelations about early childhood sexual abuse and her relationship with her mother and sister, who were gaining fame as the superstar country duo The Judds while Ashley was a high school student in Ashland and Lexington, and later an undergraduate at the University of Kentucky.
"People who have not read the book are being given a false impression by much of the media," said Judd, who turns 43 on April 19. "What they choose to focus on is so exploitative.
"I can only hope that the distortions by much of the media can serve as a Trojan horse through which, if they are actually motivated for whatever reason to buy the book, they are able to connect with the genuine content.
"The people who are reading and have completed the book are absolutely getting out of it what its intention and message is."
Toward the end of writing the memoir, Judd became involved in another process of self reflection: last Friday's episode of the NBC reality series Who Do You Think You Are?, which follows celebrities as they research their ancestry.
Judd's journey focused on the family tree of her father, Michael Ciminella, who lives in Louisville.
The program took her from her dad's home to the Kentucky state archives in Frankfort, and to Virginia and Boston and places she didn't know her family tree would have roots.
"A key element in the program is the surprise factor, and revealing to the star information they didn't know," said Judd, noting that she was a challenge because her family has always been interested in its genealogy and knew a lot about the family tree.
But the producers were able to stun Judd with the fact that her 10-time great-grandfather William Brewster was a religious-freedom activist in 17th-century England and came to the New World in 1620 on the Mayflower.
That and a few other revelations told Judd that endurance and a passion for social justice ran in her family.
Judd will soon be on TV more as the star of the planned ABC series Missing, which she is preparing to film in the Czech Republic.
It and the film Dolphin Tale, which is scheduled to come out in the fall and reunites her with frequent collaborator Morgan Freeman, represent a return to filmmaking for the actress, who has focused almost exclusively on international service work for the past five years. (She earned a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University last year.)
"It felt like it was time to go hang out on a set and be creative and light-hearted and fun — to create a dynamic character that audiences can love," said Judd, who said she has been impressed with the quality of recent TV series, including The Big C, The Good Wife and The United States of Tara. "It is such a golden age of television right now. The writing is sensational; the production values are top quality."
Filming Missing, which focuses on a mother and former CIA agent whose child is kidnapped in Europe, forces Judd to have only a brief book tour.
"To my chagrin, there aren't" any Kentucky dates on the tour, she said. "We just have to hope that Kentucky knows that I love you and you love me, and we will together celebrate a book that tells powerful stories of resilience and hope."
