Summary

In the second part of “The Shame a Country Could Assign,” the author continues her excavation of Betty’s life, describing how she (Betty) had fought against abuse ever since she was a child, particularly the abuse of her mother’s husbands. The author then tells “August” how she might have inherited a capacity for violence, but also a capacity for compassion. As an illustration, she comments on how Betty would criticize a homeless person, then ask for her purse to give that person some money.

The author then goes on to say that she “was the only female in [her] family who didn’t have a violent or absent father” (150). She goes on to say, though, that while her father was for the most part gentle and loving, the string of hardships he endured over the two year period that he...