The memoir also dissects Teed’s fraught relationship with men during this period. “I think living in Wells was the first time when I really felt like an object of desire in a continuous way,” says Teed. While Teed sometimes longs for the intimacy she witnesses between couples, she also seems to struggle when finding herself to be the recipient of romantic attention. She intermittently sets the intention of only cultivating friendships with men. She says to me: “When I was young, I think there was a big intimidation factor that kept me from being friends with men. I couldn’t help feeling that they were a cut above me. So I really wanted to lift the veil of mystification by actually spending time with men, but a lot of my experiences with men that I wrote about are really horrible! I just kept having these encounters where they really demonstrated a lack of character — at least in how they interact with women.”
I propose to Teed that perhaps men have a tendency to pigeon-hole women as sexual conquests or, if they do not see them that way, to display an almost cruel level of inattention. “Now I’m much more critical of them,” responds Teed, “but I don’t want to see people as incapable of showing me kindness. I also want to believe in people’s capacity to grow.”
While many millennial memoirs are rooted in the author’s interiority, British Columbiana conveys a distinctive sense of place. Teed represents not only the rugged geography of the region but also the way in which heritage sites like Barkerville function. In our interview, she notes that the town is “...owned by the government and perpetuates the state’s narrative of Canadian history.”
“A lot of people who worked there had a very different agenda from myself,” she remarks. “Barkerville was originally a mining town and they basically destroyed the area to build it. Something that I felt conflicted about was the minimization of this environmental destruction — the interpretation never really tapped into that stuff. It is also just a reality that a lot of funds are funneled into the upkeep of the heritage site and very few resources are left for anything else. I will say, however, that the summer I was working there was the first summer that they had Indigenous interpretation, and it was really interesting to witness the negotiations between the longstanding interpreters and the new Indigenous interpreters. I have my criticisms, but I also feel like Barkerville and its workers need support.”
Teed’s time at Barkerville ultimately challenges her passion for history, prompting her to realize that she is much more interested in how history is narrativized: “I really loved history, but sometimes you love a discipline, you enter it, and then you’re just there. With some space from academic work and research, I’ve realized that I’m much more of a storyteller.”
The memoir form tends to receive criticism for flattening out the people surrounding the speaker. Likewise, Teed felt the ethical complications of writing about real people. “In the beginning, I felt super guilty about writing this story. But one thing I tried to do was leave a lot of space for the audience to have their own judgements. I also tried to balance things out by truly exposing myself.” It is true that Teed is just as transparent about her own emotional hang-ups as she is about others’ and foregrounds the impact they have on her relationships.
This memoir also creates some of this ambiguity by representing the dialogue between Teed and her therapist Barb. Barb helps her approach problems from different angles but also brings a lot of texture to the narrative. “I think that the therapy sessions help create some distance from my initial impressions of some of my experiences,” Teed notes. “Through Barb’s interventions, these sessions function to prevent the reader from seeing my perspective as so definite. And I think they definitely soften some of my interactions.”
A recurring feeling that Teed experiences throughout the memoir is the sense that she is on the outside of other people’s stories: that life is happening to them and not to herself. As a result, Teed often finds herself wondering what kind of narrative her experiences will amount to — or fall short of. This can be a dissociative experience which increases the stakes of every moment and, I think, cuts you off from your desires. However, writing this memoir allowed Teed to revisit her desires from this time in her life and to feel “...less ashamed for having them in the first place.”
“I made a lot of decisions based on the kind of person I thought I was,” she states, “and a lot of my time at Wells was marked by thinking things and not expressing them. I realized writing the book that there are things I could have gotten if I asked for them. Expressing yourself is actually healthy and often yields results.”
