I'm writing a series of stories in a memoir about living a "back-to-the-land life in the 1970s. At one point my wife and I sought work with a local tree-planting co-op run by others living similar lives; many of them ex-Americans, refugees from Canadian cities and other drop-outs. The co-op claimed to be gender equal and offered chances at working with them to any and all applicants. But what we quickly learned was that there was this boss "Queen" of the co-op and if you gained her favour, then you had a much better chance to get on the crew. So people dug her garden, built her woodshed, dug her well, etc, to get get hired. We didn't choose to do that and weren't hired. I'd like to reveal that in my memoir, but it is based in a small community on a small island and many of the the people involved are still alive. Can I do this without facing legal or social action against me?
It's going to be a memoir. I'm not unknown in this part of the world, particularly in the coastal scene. If published, the location would be no secret, even if I changed the name. That particular anecdote is not key to the story, but I want to write about how the clap worked its way all the way from town out to the end of the road six miles away and back again and other stories too.
Well, anyone can criticize anyone socially or sue them if they decide to. There's no way to guarantee that they won't. Fictionalizing your story would probably lessen the chances though. On the other hand, there are many memoirs around anyway.
You can probably shield yourself somewhat by writing only the things that are incontrovertibly true, and leaving the reader to draw the conclusions. So the "we quickly learned" part might get you in trouble, because it's pretty hard to prove that what you learned is actually factually true. But you could write, say: More than one person told us the only way to get hired was to do extra favours for Bessy, but we didn't believe them. So while others dug her garden and fixed her well for her, we worked on our resumes. Unfortunately, it ended up being the others who were hired, not us, and we had to find someone else to give us a chance at paid employment. Or whatever. The idea is that you aren't stating anything you can't back up, and it's still pretty easy for readers to draw their own conclusions from the evidence presented.
