IN THE POLEMIC SPIRIT of Jane Anger’s The Protection for Women we publish The Worming of America as a rebuttal to Joseph Swetnam’s novel published in 1615 titled, The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Forward, and Unconstant Women: or the Vanity of Them, Choose You Whether: With a Commendation of Wise, Virtuous and Honest Women: Pleasant For Married Men, Profitable For Young Men, and Hurtful to None.
Our author and illustrator Autumn Leaf, in the spring of 1650 Boston, shares her thoughts, pain, and drawings with you, the reader, for over four hours on the morning of June 1st. Our American journey will be filled with ups and downs / twists and turns — where our own ideas of civilization, religion, sin, debt, and humanity are questioned.
“The seed of Civil Disobedience was planted by someone in Massachusetts.”
And if I drop the facade, society will drop me from the nearest tree with their Boston ballet or perhaps a burning at their stake. But beforehand, they, the “Divine” Boston Elect and Elders will hang me neatly, draw me correctly, and quarter me precisely a witch or a whore, but most likely both. My head and body parts will be scattered about the countryside, yet the Elders are only two-thirds right in accusing me of being an anarchist and an adulteress. Dear reader, pray, I’m also an artist as I write, draw you pictures, and share a June morning with you this fine spring day in 1650. My name…. I have no name, when someone says her… I turn to face them. My name used to be Susan Hutchinson. I’m the red-headed daughter of the first American libertarian, Anne Hutchinson. I still go by my American Indian name, Autumn Leaf. I’m eighteen years old — a Briton gone “Native.”