507 West Park Street
Marsh?eld, WI 54449
December 6, 2016

Kim Ziembo, Director of Instruction and Learning

Marsh?eld School District

1010 E. 4?1 Street

Marshfield, WI 54449

Dear Kim Ziembo,

I am initializing the formal complaint process, following Policy 9130, to request that
The glass gastle. currently used for a five-week unit in English ll, be furthered
reviewed by the district. Thank you.



Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle

Simon and Schuster Publishing

As a school board member, this book recently came to my attention from a
concerned parent that wrote a letter voicing her concerns to the district two
years ago, but never received a reply. Consequently, 1 met with Jason
Wilhelm and Kathleen Mahoney, who graciously loaned me the book. After
reading the book, I have concluded that it should be removed from the
curriculum.

I object to the vile language and disturbing material described below:

p. 15 Three-year-old girl playing with fire yells "Dumb-ass sonofabitch!?
?Cocksucker!?

p. 20 Argument between grandmother and father: ?You goddamned ?int-
faced hag!? ?You scaly castrating banshee bitch!"

p. 34 Father calls polite police of?cer "goddamn Gestapo.?

p. 42 Argument between the father and mother. ?Jesus H. Christ on a
goddamn crutch not taking that much time to gestate."

p. 43 ?You crazy bitch! Get your goddamn ass back in this car!?

p. 43 ?Stupid whore? ?stinking cunt"

p. 43 Drunk father tried to run over his very pregnant wife, stepped the car,
and ?dragged her back, legs flailing and threw her into the car.?

p. 71 Father tells mother to prostitute herself. "Then quit your damned
bellyaching. Or go peddle your ass at the Green Lantern.?

p. 71 Physical and verbal ?ght between father and mother over not having
any food. ?Then mom?s feet appeared in the window, followed by the rest of
her body. She was dangling from the second ?oor, her legs swinging wildly."
?Help!? Mom screamed, "He's trying to kill me!? ?Goddamn, Rose Mary, get
back in here!?

p. 77 "Goddamn Rose Mary, do you think I am a fucking idiot??

p. 79 Father takes his young son [Brian] to the Green Lantern, the local
whore house, on the son?s birthday and leaves him in the front room while he
goes in the backroom with a prostitute. When father and prostitute come out,
the father forces Brian to give her his comic book, his birthday present

p. 86 ?Billy smushed his face against mine, then grabbed my hair and made
my head bend sideways and stuck his tongue in my mouth. It was slimy and
disgusting, but when i tried to pull away, he pushed in toward me. The more I
pulled, the more he pushed, until felt his ?ngers
tugging at my shorts. His other hand was unbuttoning his own pants. To step
him, i put my hand down there, and when touched it, i knew what it was,
even though I had never touched on before.?

p. 87 ?Guess what?? Billy shouted. "i raped you!?

p. 88 Billy, breaks in and shoots up house and at four children with BB Gun.
Jeannette shoots back at him with a real pistol.

p. 91 Grandmother says ?Doesn't that goddamn lazy-ass mother ofyours ever
comb your hair??

p.95 "Mom, however, said nuns were killjoys who took the fun out of
religion.?

p. 103 Girl is molested by stranger. "One night when was almost ten, 1 was
awakened by someone running his hands over my private parts.? "He?d tried
to walk us home from school and had given Brian a magazine called ?Kids on
a Farm? with pictures of boys and girls wearing only underpants."

p. 104 "Although she thought nuns were killjoys and she didn?t follow all the
church?s rules word for word she treated the Ten Commandments more
like the Ten Suggestions - Mom considered herself a devout Catholic and
took us to mass most Sundays."

p. 105 Father challenges priest ?Yo Padre!? ?He?d challenge the priest about
the scientific impossibility of the miracles and when the priest continued to
ignore him, he?d get mad and yell out something about Pope Alexander 
bastard children or Pope Leo X?s hedonism or Pope Nicholas simony, or
the murders committed in the name of the Church during the Spanish
lnquisition. But what could you expect, he?d say, from an institution run by
celibate men who wore dresses."

p. 106 Mom was meant to live "in harmony with the wild, like the Indians,
not this lord?s-of?the-earth crap, trying to rule the entire goddamn planet,
cutting down all the forests, and killing every creature you couldn?t bring to
heel.?

p. 111 Mom takes her children shoplifting and says ?God doesn?t mind you
bending the rules a little ifyou have good reason. it?s sort oflike justifiable
homicide. This is justi?able pilfering.? Mother and Father take kids along
with them while they rob banks by simultaneously withdrawing money from
the inside counter and the drive-through and tells kids to ?wear innocent
expressions.?

p. 112 Father destroys windows, dishes and furniture in a ?drunken fury."

p. 114 ?Virgin, my ass!" Dad shouted. ?Mary was a sweet Jewish broad who
got herself knocked up!? ?And Jesus i-l. Christ is the world's best-loved
bastard.? ?Baby girl, ifyour boyfriend ever gets into your panties and you
?nd yourself in a family way, swear that it was lmmaculate Conception and
start mouthing off about miracles? he said. "Then pass around the collection
plate come Sunday."

p. 115 Father ruins Christmas and catches Christmas tree and presents on
fire and laughs "telling Mom that he was doing her a favor because trees
were pagan symbols ofworship.?

p. 117 Father goes through alcohol withdrawal.

p. 122 "He wanted to know where that goddamn sorry-assed mother of ours
was.? "Rose Mary, where the goddamn hell are you, you stinking bitch??
Mom and Dad fight; Mom slashes the air in front of Dad with a butcher knife.
p. 130 "Davy Crockett and James Bowie got what was coming to them for
stealing this land from the Mexicans.?

p. 142 ?That's Niggerville."

p. 143 "Erma was always going on about ?the niggers.? "Goddamn niggers,?
Erma always muttered. ?The reason I have not gone out of this house in
?fteen years is because I do not want to see or be seen by a nigger." Keep
this up and people are going to think you're a nigger lover." ?You ungrateful
little shit. ['11 be damned ifyou're eating my food tonight. Get your worthless
ass down to the basement.? I

p. 146 "Erma [Grandma] who'd been drinking since before breakfast, told
Brian that his britches needed mending. He started to take them off, but
Erma said she didn?t want him running around the house in his skivvies or
with a towel wrapped around him looking like he was wearing a goddamn
ordered him to follow her into Grandpa's bedroom, where she
kept her sewing kit. They?d been gone a minute or two when i heard Brian
weakly protesting. I went into Grandpa?s bedroom and saw Erma kneeling on
the ?oor in front of Brian, grabbing at the crotch ofhis pants, squeezing and
kneading while mumbling to herselfand telling Brian to hold still,
goddammit. Brian, his cheeks wet with tears, was holding his hands
protectively between his legs. Erma, still on her knees, twisted around and
glared at me. ?Why you little bitch!" she said.?

p. 147 for being such a 

p. 160 Abuse ofa "mentally retarded" man ?The other kids in the
neighborhood teased Kenny by telling him that ifhe gave them a 
showed them his 

p. 160 ?The mother, Ginnie Sue Pastor, was the town whore.?

p. 161 ?Was whoring easy money? Was it ever fun, or was it just gross? Did
Kathy and her sisters and her father all know Ginnie Sue Pastor was a whore?
What did they think of it?"

p. 163 "One thing about whoring: it put a chicken on the table.?

p. 164 Coal mining is ?dangerous, cramped and dirty work and it put all
miners in bad moods and they came home and took it out on their wives, who
took it out on their kids, who took it out on other kids.? Coal miners have
?street brawls, bar stabbings, parking lot beatings, wife slappings, and
toddler whalings.?

p. 183 Girl is molested by her uncle: his ?hand creeping onto my thigh.?

p. 184 ?i looked down and saw Uncle Stanley?s pants were unzipped and he
was playing with himself." Mom tries to calm her down by explaining that
?sexual assault is a crime of ifyou don?t think you?re hurt, then
you aren?t.? ?So many women make such a big deal of these things. But you?re
stronger than that."

p. 187 ?She could have been a famous artist by now, she yelled, if she hadn?t
had children.? "Mom insisted that we chant Hail Mary's while we worked. it?s
a way of cleansing our souls while we are cleaning house,? she said. ?We?re
killing two birds with one stone.?

p. 188 "i can?t leave your father,? she said ?it?s against the Catholic faith.?

p. 191 "Hey You?re white friend?s got a red bush coming in!? "That?s
right,? I said, ?Collar got to match the cuffs.?

p. 200 ?Later, we all learned she?d been arrested for stabbing her mother?s
boyfriend to death.? "The other girls talked endlessly among themselves
about who still had their cherry and how far they?d let their boyfriend go.?

p. 210 Father picks out dress for 13 year old daughter to wear, takes her to a
bar, buys her a drink, and encouraged her to dance with a man that he was
shooting pool with for money. ?I?m going to take your girl upstairs." "Sure,?
Dad said. ?So with Dad?s blessing I went upstairs."

p. 213 "I?m sure he just pawed you some."

p. 215 ?Mr. Becker got so randy that he came up behind rubbed up
against my backside.?

p. 228 Father steals his children?s money.

p. 274 "That two-room squat was cramped and Maureen and Dad would get
into the worst screaming fights, with Maureen calling Dad a worthless drunk
and Dad calling Maureen a sick puppy, the mm of the litter, who should have
been drowned at birth.?

p. 275 "Maureen stabbed Mom.?

Reasons for objection:

I see no value in this memoir choice. It has been in the curriculum for six
years and i believe it is time for another option. Parents have complained
about this book, yet it remains. Writing out the quotes and descriptions made
me physically ill and i cannot help but wonder what effect these words have
on a fifteen year old. Words do matter. This book violates our current
Student and Parent Handbook [2016/2017] on language use by students. A

student would be removed from class for using the profane and abusive
language that is written throughout this book.

With a little bit of research, 1 found that the book is written at a 7th grade
level [Scholastic.com) and is listed at the Marsh?eld Public Library as a
Sociology course source for college freshmen. The language is vile. The abuse
is rampant. And, as a Catholic, the blasphemy against Jesus Christ and his
Blessed Mother Mary is beyond offensive. The representations of the
Catholic faith are wholly inaccurate and never refuted. This violates Policy
2270, Religion in the Curriculum which states: "Instructional activities shall
not be permitted to advance or inhibit any particular religion or religion
generally" and ?The District?s instructional materials shall not be designed to
influence students to accept or reject a particular religious beliefor point of
view." In the Catholic faith, fifteen and sixteen is the age for being confirmed
in the faith through the Sacrament ofCon?rmation. The mockery and
hypocrisy ofthe Catholic faith, portrayed by the author?s mother, father, and
grandmother, throughout this book negatively in?uences the reader towards
the Catholic faith. Please ?nd another educational source.

Sincerely,