Milo: Did you know that when the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps, they let everyone go, but the queer and trans people? Instead they put those folks in jail to start the sentence for their crime of being queer or trans.

And I was like, there's no way that's true. I was like, that can't be true. But me being me, I, I looked it up and it was . true. And that essentially started this multi-year adventure that turned into the lilac people. '

Hello and welcome to the Gender IQ Podcast. Today we're diving into a story that history tried to erase the breathtaking debut novel, the Lilac People by Milo. Todd, for these next two episodes, we're featuring our exclusive interview with Milo as he shares about this book and what it can teach us today, the Lilac people takes us into the lives of queer and trans people.

In 1930s and 1940s, Germany, illuminating a brief golden age of trans acceptance before the rise of fascism, as well as chronicling their stories at the end of World War ii. In this first episode, we'll explore the literary craft behind the book Milo's story, how he came to write this book, and how he constructed the narrative through multiple timelines, the symbolism that's woven throughout, and this delicate balance of history and fiction.

And if you've been listening to this podcast for a bit, you'll notice the new music. This actually is the song Das Lila Lied it's a German cabaret song written in 1920 considered a queer anthem during this time, and it features pretty prominently in the book itself.

A heads up before we begin this episode includes some historical terminology about queer and trans folks that reflects the language of the era. And would be considered outdated or offensive terms for today.

So just be aware of that as you listen.

Jess: Please enjoy this special episode of the Gender IQ Podcast. I can't wait for you to hear it.

And welcome to this episode of the Gender IQ Podcast, milo Todd is a Massachusetts Cultural Council grantee and a Lambda literary fellow. His work has appeared in Slice Magazine and elsewhere. He's co-editor in chief of Fog Lifter and teaches creative writing to queer and trans adults.

His debut of the Lilac People publishers through Counterpoint on April 29th, 2025.

And the Lilac people is already getting a lot of buzz, including being selected for the Indie next list, which I'm told is a big deal. I know nothing about the literary world, but I hear that's a big deal.

Jess: So Milo, thanks so much for being here. I'm so excited.

Milo: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. I'm really, when you approached me about this, I was really excited about it. I was like, oh, yes, I definitely wanna be on this podcast. And I also, think highly of you Jess, and your insight into things.

So I'm excited just to have a conversation with you and everyone else I know hear us.

Jess: This is gonna be, this is gonna be like the best nerd out because I'm obsessed with queer and trans history, and I'm gonna have so much fun with this. I think you are too, and if other people appreciate it, great. Bonus for that.

So I also got to feel a little bit fancy because I've never gotten an advanced copy of a book before. But I also usually read things in the form of audiobook. So getting through it as a PDF was a little bit tough, but once I got into it, I really couldn't stop.

I loved. This book, I can't tell you how much.

Milo: Oh, well thank, thank you so much. It does mean a lot to me especially when folks are like, yeah, I just read it in this format that I normally don't. And this, compels me to already give a shout out to Max Myers, who is my audio book narrator and is in the community and has done a phenomenal job with the audio book.

The audio book is coming and you might really like it 'cause Max just is fantastic with it.

Jess: Anyone who is an  ADHD-er like me, yes. There will be an audiobook format. Highly recommended it. That's great.

So tell us a little bit about this book and how you came to write it.

Milo: Yeah. The Lilac People is historical fiction, but I always tell folks it is deeply researched historical fiction non-linear format, two different timelines. And the one is the Weimar Republic, and the other part takes place right after World War II has ended specifically for Germany. So it's still ongoing with the US and Japan and all this other stuff. But with Germany they've been defeated.

And so it is essentially the story throughout both of these timelines. This one, who we would now consider a trans man who basically lived through the beautiful trans rights times of the Weimar Republic. Hitler comes to power. He sees all of this fall apart, and then trying to put his life back together after the fact with his partner Sophie, once the war is over, he is okay, at least the Nazis are gone now. We might be safe. But the allied forces come in and he finds out very quickly, we're just as in danger as we were before because it turned out the United States disagreed with the Nazis on a lot of things were in agreement when it came to queer and trans people.

So he's been hiding in plain sight this entire time to survive the Nazis. And now he needs to do it all over again with the United States. And to make this even more complicated, they find A trans Holocaust survivor that ran off from the camps when the Allied forces came in and tried to imprison him for being trans. They're now post World War II hiding a trans person in their upstairs from the Allied forces. Yeah, so it's, it's a largely unknown history when it comes to trans and queer people, especially in Germany, and the ways in which the United States played a certain role and it's an important point about the way the US contributed.

Jess: Yeah, absolutely. Dude, it's so good. It is my favorite new book for sure.

Well, talk to us a little bit about, your professional background. I know it's not your first, but what kind of work have you done before that led to this being your debut novel?

Milo: Yeah. I think this might be like a three part question for me. So bear with me. I - this is who I am. But so first is I always tell folks that I am technically an armchair historian. I did not go to school specifically as a history major. In fact growing up I hated history. It was my most hated subject because it was all these boring old dead cis-het white men -

Jess: Yeah.

Milo: - that all had the same resting bitch face and photos, I don't know.

Jess: I love that. Yes, I hated it too. Hey, because, I think we were being taught a lot of like dates and I was told to memorize. I didn't care about it. I suddenly care a lot about it as an adult.

Milo: Yeah. It was very dry and it was stuff I just didn't care about. And so when I found out about trans and queer history as an adult, like that was a whole thing. So my background is specifically, I've been specifically trained in philosophy in Logic with a capital L, body and gender phenomenology - all these fancy words that really all it means is I have been heavily trained in the ability to digest mass quantities of text, find needles in haystacks, put together these little jigsaw pieces into a coherent picture best I can.

And so that's where a lot of that. Knowledge came from as far as like how to do this research. I was like, I am schooled on this. So what better place to put this toward than history? And using critical thought and really teasing out these pieces of information and again, making something coherent.

And then of course there were, still pieces missing and I wanted to make it very accessible, so that's why I went for historical fiction rather than a nonfiction book.

Spoiler. There will be a nonfiction book in the future on trans history but that's much later. So I was filling in the gaps with fictional narrative that, again, still logically makes sense. So that's part one. Part two is most of the other books I have written were in fact trans history, gender non-conforming history, relevant to given times and places, and at least, oh boy, at least three of those works publishers just didn't take them.

So this has been over a 10 year journey for me, just with getting published for stuff. Yeah. And I actually have a wonderful article that's gonna be coming out closer to the debut launch on April 29th for Lit Hub. It is called writing fiction in an era of alternative facts, looking at trans history and how the erasure causes this cycle where publishers didn't know what to do with it and were like, "I don't understand." And you can't blame them because they don't know any trans history. So you get stuck in this weird cycle.

But that's part two. And then part three, this particular book I remember how it started and several years ago, back when social media was not so horrible. I was scrolling through my feed and a little like meme-like thing popped up.

I don't even know who posted it. I think it was someone I didn't even know. And it said something like, "did you know that when the Allied forces liberated the concentration camps, they let everyone go, but the queer and trans people? And that they instead put those folks in jail to start the sentence for their crime of being queer or trans."

And I was like, there's no way that's true. I was like, that can't be true. But me being me I looked it up and it was true. And that essentially started this multi-year adventure of research that eventually turned into The Lilac People. 'Cause the deeper I got in, the more I was like - I not like I'm like the one true crusader or anything, but I was like, "I have to do something with this."

Like I kept - like it was on my head, on my brain all the time,

Jess: I can get, being really compelled and driven by a single question. Yeah. Like that, like I completely can relate to that of just not being able to let go, especially to a question like that when you didn't realize something's so crucial to our history.

The opener of the book tells us about this truth in that we think the war is over and there's this narrative that everybody is safe, but that wasn't true for queer and trans folks. So maybe you could read that portion that We've Received Word.

Milo: Absolutely. And I love that you've asked this because right next to me is my brand spanking new official copies of the books. This is my first time actually reading from it so thank you for that.

"We've received word that the liberation of the camps is not the celebration we'd hoped. The allied forces are sending all pink triangles and any qualifying black triangles to jail to start the sentence for their crimes. All other categories of identity, crime, or marker have been liberated for the allies feel they have suffered enough.

We repeat all inverts, transvestites and lilac. People who survived the camps have been sent to jail. If you avoided detection during the war, you are still not safe. We repeat. You are still not safe"

Jess: Oof. Okay so how intentional was it for you to start the book there?

Milo: It was how could - I didn't wanna spend half the book with this much setup.

What do you do when you're trying to tell a story about a history that people don't really know about - what if I did these kind of - sounded like radio broadcasts, like secret radio broadcasts. Which were a thing. And so that's kind of where I started with that. Let's give them that info right now, put 'em right into the elements. And so like you just get hit with it right at the beginning. Here's what they've been dealing with, here's what's going on. And also signaling to the reader, from the first page, this is what you're in for - is a lot of stuff you probably didn't know and is gonna be possibly quite shocking.

A slight change that happened that was suggested to me by my, uh, editor uh, Dan Lopez from Counterpoint, and he's - he's phenomenal. Originally these were intentionally meant to be radio broadcasts and he actually said, can we make them a bit more disembodied? So it - it sounds like still radio-esque, but it's never stated, it's never known if, these characters have actually heard the broadcast - is this a Greek chorus that's going on.

Uh, and I kind of loved that idea. So we did adjust it a bit to make it more like that. So it became a bit more, I don't know if literary is the word I wanna use or poetic, but it's just -

Jess: Poetic I think. Yeah, because it does eliminate this - 'cause then a reader would start to wonder about like, "well what about the radio? Like how do they keep that going?" You start to wonder about the mechanics of a thing.

Milo: Yeah. So I loved that suggestion I was like, "yeah let's do that." I wanted to really just get into the meat of everything just immediately. So that, to me, was the most efficient way of doing it.

Jess: Yeah. So it does - it's very stark. I actually also didn't know about anything beyond a pink triangle.

I know, we know like the yellow star, pink triangle. But I'd never heard of a black triangle. Yeah.

Milo: Exactly. Yeah, so you're right. There was the yellow star David that was for Jewish folks. There is the pink triangle, which is more famous, for lack of a better word. Yeah. That was for gay cis men as well as trans women. Because of course they lumped them together. And of course, as time went on, that's where the pink triangle came from. You know, it was reclaimed. Yeah. Act Up, for - as a form of strength and resilience. In, in later years. So that's where the Pink Triangle came from.

And then there are a couple different, triangle colors. But then we have the black triangle, and so the black triangle is another one that folks don't know much about.

And I think that's in part because it was a bit of a grab bag. Usually the best English term that we could use for the black triangle was folks who were labeled as asocial. And so this was anyone who wasn't really behaving the way that they should be. And so some of the folks that fell into this category were cis lesbians and trans men and transmasculine people.

Other gender non-conformity that did not fall under the category of a trans woman or an otherwise an amab person not behaving in a male heterosexual way. This also, though, included some other like folks that they claimed were not working as hard as they should be, or were like, quote unquote lazy.

There was a lot, it was a bit of a grab bag, but one of the notables was cis lesbians and trans men had black triangles.

Jess: Okay. Why title the book, The Lilac People? Yeah. Where did that come from?

Milo: Yeah. I have to say the Lilac People as a title wasn't my idea. It's, it's a joke within my beta readers and my, my agent at the time, Mike Nardulo who's amazing. But I was having a lot of trouble titling this book. I had a lot of trouble.

And this is actually not the first book I've written. It's the first that's gotten published and my beta readers and other folks were like, you're usually so good with your titles. And I was like, yeah, I'm just not hitting it with this one. And I came up with a lot of weird titles. Sometimes they were in German and people were like, "what are you - that's a bad idea. No one's gonna buy a book they can't pronounce."

Jess: Yeah.

Milo: And I was like, that's fair. Fair criticism. Yeah. And I was getting weirdly into trying to title the book after the - the asparagus theme. Because there's the whole thing. Yeah. 

Jess: There's a lot about asparagus. Yeah.

Milo: There's a whole theme in there that I feel is very important, but out of context, it's really weird and people are like, "why asparagus?"

So anyway when I was talking with all my beta readers, one of the questions I had for them was, can you think of a better title? Please, for the love of god, help me. And I kid you not, every single one of them all had the same exact answer again, independent of each other.

And they all said, what about The Lilac People? And because they just pointed out what I didn't see, which was, "let's talk about the community."

And I was like, you're right. So that was it. And agent loved it, publisher loved it. Never changed after that.

Jess: Wow.

Milo: Yeah. It's meant to - it wasn't my idea, but I love it. And it really is just meant to showcase this community of people that were deliberately erased in multiple ways.

Jess: Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And I don't think it has to come from you to still be valuable again, like the collective. Exactly.

Milo: Exactly. Look, I mean, it's community. It's very meta, so I - I - yeah, it gets very meta.

Jess: Well - and I don't wanna get into the terrible things that went on at the camps, because I think one of the things that's really lovely about this book is the Queer Joy. I loved some of the depictions of what nightlife was like in Berlin before the Nazis came into power. So paint us a picture of what things were like

Milo: Yes. I love this question. Who doesn't want some queer and trans joy, right? Yes. And that was the other reason I wanted to write this and to show that progress is not linear. And that's true. And I feel like this book really shows that.

So there was a time where there was a very flourishing queer and trans community in Germany. So let's first talk about what the heck the Weimar Republic was. 'Cause some folks may not know that.

So the Weimar Republic was Germany's government specifically from 1919 to 1933. It was a very small pocket of time, and this is because it was the period between the end of World War I and the rise of Nazi Germany.

And so this was actually a big moment in time because the Weimar Republic was a constitutional federal republic for the very first time in Germany's history. This meant it was governed by elected representatives and by an elected leader rather than by a monarch.

And it was named after the town of Weimar, which was where Germany's new government was formed after the Kaiser had abdicated after World War I. So it's this little sweet little pocket of time and - comparatively - so there was a lot of freedom at this point. People could vote for their leaders. People had more of a say in things. Democracy was happening. Yeah. It also sucked because if, you know, your - your war history, Germany got slammed with a lot of the blame for World War I. Right. Their money became truly worthless. You could have an entire wheelbarrow full of Marks and it like, would not buy a newspaper. Like it was really bad.

The poverty gap got massive between the super rich and the super poor. It was in a lot of ways, a really bad time, a lot of poverty and all that stuff. But queer people and their resilience. We were just like, "let's just make the best of it. We've got this freedom. Let's just really, we've got some elbow room, so let's just really have a good time. Best we can." The queer community just flourishes.

So during this time there are like dozens and dozens of queer and trans magazines and underground literature. And it's just like circulating much more freely. One of the most popular ones was for trans people was Das 3. Geschlecht, which means the third gender or the third sex - geschlecht happens to mean sex and gender in German - and inside it there were fiction and nonfiction stories that were written by trans people, by allies, and loved ones. There were medical articles about related surgeries sexual education tips on how to pass in public - how to transvest as it were. There were photographs celebrating trans people. There were ads offering clothing swaps and makeup tutorials and chest binding and tucking and just basically what social media is today,

Jess: Yeah. Social media. I think about, like, zines in organizing communities and grassroots communities, like exactly.

In the 1920s, this is something that existed and was well known and I'm sure had its conflict. It wasn't like it was all rosy, like you said, but I think a lot of people have probably not even given thought to the fact that they just - I know I would've sat with an implicit assumption that none of this stuff could have existed before the ultramodern era, like before the 21st century. And it absolutely did. It absolutely did. 

Milo: It absolutely did. Absolutely. This stuff existed in a very recognizable way to modern times too.

Jess: You talk about characters in the book having had top surgery Yep. And I think that those kind of details would be surprising to most people.

Milo: Yeah. Yeah. And to skip ahead a little bit, the Institute of Sexual Science was the first place known in the colonized world to have, specifically, gender affirming surgeries. Yeah. At the time top surgery for both AMAB and AFAB people was becoming a thing. The first surgeries happened there. And then bottom surgery wasn't really a thing yet for AFAB people. But there was a trans woman named Dora Richter and -

Jess: 1931 is when she got her surgery.

Milo: Yep. She had the first known bottom surgery for an AMAB person. And so that, and that all happened at the institute, so there was a lot going on. So yeah. People are baffled when I talk about, my characters having top surgery in the book, and I'm like, oh no. This was a thing.

Jess: Yeah.

Milo: It was new-ish by the time the book starts. But it was - it definitely happened and like my characters had it. So you -

Jess: Yeah, no, I find myself like identifying with the characters, being like, "oh man, he's going through all of this. And he's what? What? He's two weeks post-op?" That - oh, I found myself very concerned for somebody who might need to run away from Nazis in T-Rex arms, like very early recovery. What's the scar care regimen like? Yeah, exactly.

Milo: So I don't think the scar care was as good. Yeah. Probably not. But yeah, these were the pioneers in surgery and, you gotta love them for that.

But yeah. So backing up a little bit, back to this flourishing of queer and trans community at the time along with all of these magazines, was - there were just so many queer and trans clubs too. Yeah. A lot of folks went clubbing. There - there may or may not have been a bit of cocaine involved with folks.

Jess: It was twenties.

Milo: Yeah, it was very twenties and it was a lot of, "we are poor as hell, so may as well go drinking and do a bit of coke" I guess was the mentality, "and dance and have a good time." So anyway, one of one of the more prominent things in the book is this queer and trans club called the El Dorado. And it was one of the most famous, it was particularly trans-friendly.

There were actually a couple of different El Dorados that popped up around Berlin at different times. But this one ran specifically from 1928 until 1932, December of 1932. Hitler became chancellor in January of 1933. Right. So that was not a coincidence. But yeah. Jazz was really popular there, a lot of dancing, a lot of drinking, singing, just a lot of joy all around.

Couples would dance with each other however they wanted beyond sex or gender. They loved the song Das Lila Lied -The Lilac Song. And one of the other interesting things is actually just like the Institute of Sexual Science this particular El Dorado was actually a tourist destination through - for international tourists, cis-het, people who would come in and I'm sure queer people too were like, "oh, I gotta go here." Yeah. But it was a tourist thing and it wasn't - I'm sure some folks, it was more of that queer tourism where it's "I'm gonna go and stare at queer people like their animals."

Jess: Yeah. Like prurient interest or feeling a little bit like you're on safari or something.

Milo: Yeah, exactly. But there were also just folks who just wanted to experience this world 'cause they'd never been exposed to it and seeing all this joy.

But yeah, a little fun fact about the El Dorado. The queer people who would frequent there, they needed money and they do various things to make money. But one of the things is they would just sell cocaine to the rich American tourists that would come in and they were like, "oh, you need cocaine? Go to the El Dorado. They'll hook you up." So they were just selling coke to like ladies and furs and I just -

Jess: Oh I hope they overcharged the hell out of them.

Milo: Oh, I'm sure they did. Yeah. I'm sure they did.

Jess: I'm here for it.

Milo: Yeah, I'm here for it. It's funny. Don't do drugs, kids, but this was funny for history.

Jess: Hi there, Jess here with a quick note while you're listening to this conversation with Milo. Todd. If The Lilac People has already caught your attention and to be honest, how could it not, its official release date is April 29th, 2025, so you can pre-order it, or if you're listening to this after April 29th, just order it through our curated storefront on bookshop.org.

Ordering through that link means a few important things. One, you'll be supporting independent bookstores instead of the big box retailers. Two, you'll be uplifting queer authors and queer stories including supporting Milo Todd. And you'll also be supporting the work we do here at My Gender IQ purchases made through our link send a small commission our way, which helps us keep creating content and education that matters. So if you've been meaning to break up with that big box retailer online, this is a perfect place to start. Visit my gender iq.com/bookshop to get the lilac people today. And thanks for supporting Queer art and community. While you're at it. All right, back to the conversation.

Milo: With all the progress they had made in such a short span of time, the situation remained precarious.

It could all tip backward quite violently with the weight of a feather.

Jess: And I think that actually helps me understand more about - 'cause when you mentioned The El Dorado was taken over by the Nazis later and the sign that they put out front that essentially in English means "this is the place."

That makes even more sense to me. Because it was such this tourist attraction of yeah, "this is the place." And we have really now occupied it and it's -

Milo: Yeah. And I love your - your translation of that part, because I know exactly what you're talking about.

So for folks who don't know, there's the famous photo of the El Dorado and out front is their sign, their slogan, which is Hier Ist's Richtig, which I always interpret as "here it's right." But like that - it - but I totally understand your translation as well. Yeah. It's a lot. I think - 

Jess: Google told me.

Milo: Yeah. Yeah. "Here it's right" or "this is the place." Obviously at the time it was meant to be like, "you are welcome here. Queer and trans people are here. This is the place for you. Here it is right." And so that's why it was a big deal. So that was the slogan on the signs out front.

So when the Nazis took it over and deliberately turned it into a Nazi headquarters or what have you, yeah, they staged a new photo that essentially recreates the first one. Which is these Nazi officers outside there are swastikas all over it and it's barely recognizable. Save for that slogan. And again, that - and it was a propaganda photo. And it was a very strong message was being sent. 

Jess: Yeah. Got it.

Milo: Part mocking and part like "this is the new here. It's right. This is the new place. New world order."

Jess: Yeah. Quite literally uh, there's something so chilling about like - it actually did just give me chills.

Milo: Yeah. Especially when you compare the two photos, it's whew.

Jess: Yeah.

Milo: Even though, it was intentional propaganda, it's still powerful, for lack of a better word.

Jess: Yeah. Well, And I wanted you too, to paint a little bit more clear picture too of what the Institute for Sexual Science was and what it meant. What would something like this look like today? Is the ISS like, a Fenway Health, is it a, like a, Museum of Sex?

Milo: Yeah. So yeah. The Institute of Sexual Science - it would be like on pamphlets where people would come to Germany and would be like, "no, the institute, this is a stop you need to make so you can learn all about these queer and trans people."

I feel where the institute was before it got destroyed is essentially where we as a trans community medically, rights wise, is essentially where we've gotten to these days. So it knocked us back our progress by about a hundred years. And so it's - I don't know if it is history repeating itself, if it's a coincidence or if it's intentional that we're seeing this rise of anti-transness now that we finally have gotten back roughly to where we were before. Obviously technologies are different and all that, but it's quite eerie. Yeah.

The institute itself, I don't know if there's a great comparison to today because they were just everything. They were everything. Because Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld was all about educating people, and he truly believed that education was the true way forward. The institute was actually running tours, 'cause they had a whole education and museum section.

They were giving tours and education. They were a museum. They had this massive research library. They did a lot of outreach. There was actually two different things. One is that they had this little box or like mailbox out front. And it was there so that people, everyday people, could write down their questions about trans people, queer people, sex education, abortion access, STIs, anything you could think of. They would write down these questions anonymously and put it in the box. And I believe it was once a week, open for everybody, they could come into one of the conference rooms and Hirschfeld or someone else would read and answer these questions live for everybody. And you would have prominent researchers who came in from another country sitting right next to a day laborer from Berlin, just 'cause they were curious too.

And so it was this very open education thing. So it was a lot of outreach, getting people involved, ask your questions, no shame, all that stuff. Another piece of outreach that Hirschfeld did, is he educated the police despite there being laws. There was, paragraph 1 75, which was anti sodomy. And then there was paragraph 180 3, I believe it was, and that was the anti cross-dressing law. So technically trans people couldn't, quote unquote be trans in public. Right. And so how do you work around this? He couldn't get the law taken down, so he did the next best thing.

He educates the police and it works. And so the police made a statement, and this is just paraphrasing, but the police commissioner basically said, transvestites- trans people are not spies. They're not mentally ill. Leave them alone. They're not, these people trying to be have no evil intentions. They're just living their lives and they made this public statement. And then the other thing is that Hirschfeld worked with the police to create what was known as the transvestite card.

Jess: Yes, I was gonna ask that. Yeah, that's the big one. Tell us, what is a transvestite card?

Milo: Yes. So the transvestite card these days might sound a little dystopian, but it was a very big deal at the time. So these were legal documents that allowed a trans person to live as themselves in public, theoretically without getting harassed on the street.

Again, like cross-dressing was illegal. In theory, a cop could mess with you at any time if and arrest you if they were like, we think you're cross-dressing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they would throw you in jail. I find it interesting that the original laws, the anti sodomy law, that basically the "don't be gay" law was six months in jail while the "don't be trans" law, the cross-dressing law, was a year in jail. It was actually considered twice as bad, which people don't talk about. 

Jess: That feels like it tracks-

Milo: Yes. Yes, it does

Jess: - with what we're seeing today.

Milo: Yes. So in theory, you could get in big trouble for, right, living as yourself in public, if a cop approached you, and were like, "what do you think you're doing?" if you had a card on you, you would pull it out and the cops would be like, oh, my bad. Oh, got it. You're registered, you're a registered trans person.

Exactly. And comes off very dystopian. But for the time, it was extremely big deal to try and gain rights and it seemed to be quite effective so yeah, that was the transvestite card.

And there's actually a really great scene in the book where two characters actually have to use their transvestite cards with the police.

Jess: I really love that scene.

Milo: I had way too much fun writing this scene. But the actual transvestite card scene where -or the main character, Bertie and his best friend Gert, Bert and Gert, as I love to call them. They are these two trans men who are coming home from the El Dorado in the middle of the night and are just drunk off their asses. They are drunk. And like it's these two trans people just drunk walking home in the middle of the night in the city. And one, they're relatively safe, which is mind boggling for us these days.

But they get stopped by a cop because they're being way too loud walking home. Just being drunk and loud. Yeah. And they are super drunk. And again, you wouldn't believe this in the modern day, but they basically pull out their cards. They finally managed to, they were so drunk and the cop was like, oh okay, I'll leave you alone, but get home because you're being way too loud.

And so they were like, "okay." But it just, I don't know. It was this moment of joy where they could be drunk. And being openly trans in the middle of the night, and they got stopped by a cop and they were okay. So yeah. 

Jess: I thought that was a really beautiful scene -

Milo: Yeah. Me too.

Jess: - of just the, yeah. Trans people getting to be human in public. And getting to be themselves in public. It was a really beautiful depiction of, yeah. Who couldn't relate to coming home late from a bar or a club being a little bit sloppy.

Milo: Yeah.

Jess: And just to be able to walk home with your friend and get stopped by the cops and be like, oh shit, okay, here's my thing.

And be able to go home safely is just such a stark contrast to the timeframe. You also talk about in the book, in either 1933 or 1945. I really, I thought that was very important scene too.

Milo: Yeah. Yeah. I just, I thought it was funny too. I don't know. I had a great time. Oh, it's hilarious. Yeah. It just, yeah. Yeah. It really - and the other reason I love that scene is it shows kinda like what you're just saying, like there are so many marginalized people these days that can't even comprehend that level of safety, especially when it comes to alcohol and your inhibitions are lowered and you're walking home at night and stuff like that.

Jess: Yeah

And I just want people to know, oh yeah, we once had this. Like we once had this, so -

Jess: We did.

Milo: So I guess it's funny and really sad at the same time.

Jess: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's the bittersweetness of this story really. Yeah. And there's, I know that on page 132, there's one point where a character is saying, "I'm so sorry this is the only lilac life you've known. There used to be so much joy." 

Milo: Yeah. That's a very good point.

Jess: "We've received word that is one of the first orders of business. Transvestite cards will no longer be granted. All persons currently in possession of a transvestite card will have it revoked. We repeat transvestite cards will no longer be granted nor honored. We're also receiving reports that most new name changes for transvestites are being rejected. Take heart fellow souls. Let us hope that this dark day is short."

One of the things I wanted to do with this episode was sort of get into some of the artistic decisions that you made in the book. So the first that I think of is there's a very abrupt transition when Hitler comes to power, and all of a sudden it's like the joy suddenly completely ends. You have the scene where people are dancing, the narrative is moving forward. There's dialogue between the characters, and then there's an announcement that Hitler has been named the Chancellor of Germany, and everything changes and the literary structure changes as well.

No narrative, there's just italicized text with these disembodied radio broadcast so that we've received word. Chronicling one change after another I found that to be an incredibly powerful way to tell the story about Hitler's rise and just wanted to talk about your use of these disembodied radio broadcasts.

Milo: Yeah.

Jess: So talk to us about the structure of that and how you decided to do it that way, 'cause I thought they were really powerful choices.

Milo: Yeah, absolutely. I love talking about this because I love occasionally playing with white space. Because as - as far as I'm concerned with storytelling, and especially with things in the written word, that white space is a way of giving a reader's brain kind of a breath. And to process things. And so most of the book is just standard prose style. Whatever. But there are two distinct places that I wanted to play with white space. And they are basically opposites of each other in my brain. And the one is that part you know, page after page of "we've received word. We've received word. We've received word," yeah. After Hitler comes to power. Yeah. And each page, each little paragraph of we've received word, sometimes it's only a sentence long on the entire page, is another step of Hitler's rise to power.

And as you keep turning, it just gets worse and worse and worse. I really liked putting it together in that way. And there was actually a review from someone. I'm gonna give 'em a little shout out. A bookseller named Douglas Riggs at Bank Square Books in Mystic, Connecticut who likened that part, in the modern day as like doom scrolling. I was just thinking that, and that actually wasn't - I - consciously intentional. And I think in a way though, that's what I was doing.

Jess: I - you know what I was thinking actually though? Yeah. I literally had that same thought, 'cause I was comparing it to doom scrolling, but the thought I had was that the current way that we doom scroll would be like having all of those paragraphs like on the same page. Yeah. But when we actually go in, we're bombarded and overwhelmed with too much of it all of a sudden and can't take it all in. Yeah. What you did was give us a way to take it in and take a breath in between.

Milo: Yeah, so I went this white space route where it's almost taking in too much breath. And so it is still hitting you very fast, 'cause you keep turning the pages, you read it very quickly.

Jess: Yeah.

Milo: But there's all this white space where you're stuck there just in limbo.

Jess: Yeah.

Milo: Processing in this white space. And then something else. And something else.

To also then juxtapose it to Carl's monologue - people who don't know what I'm talking about. You will know when you get there, yes.

Jess: You will. Because he's the person who shows up at the farm having escaped a camp. Yeah. His narrative is these very short sentences, a very stark break from the prose that's in the rest of the book.

Milo: Yeah, it's the entire chapter and it's a few pages long. It's the only time he talks about what happened to him and I purposely put it together where it, there is no white space. Yeah. It is all one ongoing paragraph for however many pages it is. So it's very dense and on top of that he speaks in these very short, clipped sentences.

And I did all of that intentionally for a lot of different reasons. One of them is when we compare it to the, we received word, we received a received word.

Uh, There's a lot of white space. It's very, in a lot of ways, bird's eye view. When we get to Carl - this is a very individual person who experienced these things. So it's very tight. It's very concentrated. And so that was one of the reasons I wanted that juxtaposition.

But the other two reasons were one, I feel this is the way Carl would talk about this. I feel he's this character,  who, as insightful as he is he's also very shut down emotionally. Like he is still traumatized by all of this. So when he speaks about it, he can only do it in these clipped sentences that are in a way oddly removed.

Jess: This felt like someone in hypo-arousal -

Milo: Yes.

Jess: - telling the story. And the only way that they could tell the story. From a very dissociated place.

Milo: Yeah. And so that's how - like he wants to tell the story, but he can't feel the story -

Jess: No.

Milo: - because he has shut down. 

Jess: You can't feel it and tell it at the same time.

Milo: No.

Jess: There's no way.

Milo: Yeah. And so I felt that was what he would do. He would just be like, "I'm gonna say it. Don't interrupt me. Here's, here we go." And then the last bit, the reason I made his monologue just no white space is - not that I wanted the reader to really feel it, 'cause that's just like a mean thing to do - but I really wanted folks to not be able to take a breath in their brain. Like it's like - you're on the surface and he's pulling slowly, pulling you down with him and you can't breathe. And you're like, "but I'm gonna keep reading." I can't stop, like "I need to know." And so you are not gonna be released until he has finished his story. And - and I think to me that was really trying to honor what the people of the time went through, especially those who did not survive because.

One of the things I never wanted this book to be was like trauma porn or like for entertainment value.

Jess: And it's very much not, there's nothing that's very gratuitous about anything that you do. I think that was, it was just, it was gut wrenching. It was just gut wrenching in a way that felt just very authentic. I think I did need to take a break after that chapter. Yeah. I remember being like, yeah. After it was over and like getting up and shaking my body out a little bit. Yeah. 'Cause it is - it's - that's his story. That's what happened to him.

Milo: Yeah. Yeah. I've gotten that feedback from quite a few folks, just reviewers in general, my beta readers, all sorts of folks where no one was saying, "oh my god take it out." But they were like, I needed to stop after that chapter. It was very hard. And I was like, "yeah, I'm the one that had to write it." So it was really tough.

Jess: And I've definitely read worse, like even in like Stone Butch Blues - there are graphic images from Stone Butch Blues that still stay with me to this day. And I will say, your book did not evoke any of those things for me in a way that's has some charge to it still.

Milo: Yeah. Yeah.

Jess: It was - it's not a beach read. It could be a beach read, sure. But it didn't feel gratuitous in any of those ways. It felt very purposeful -

Milo: Good. 

Jess: - and gentle in the ways that you're like, "I need you to understand this, but you can close the book and take a breath -

Milo (3): Yes.

Jess (2): - and come back to it."

Milo (3): Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Jess: All right. Well - and speaking of kind of needing to take a breath, take a break. We're coming toward the end of our conversation. Let's end on a little bit of a lighter note.

Alright man. Talk to me about asparagus because what was this whole, what was this whole thing?

Milo: Okay, so the asparagus thing has just - I - actually it's the same - Das Lila Lied - The Lilac song - neither of these elements were meant to take such real estate in the book.

And as I was wrote the rough draft and then kept revising it, they just started coming to the forefront thematically until I was like, "okay, this is the book. It's asparagus and The Lilac Song." And so asparagus has now almost become like an inside joke with my friends and everything. Just they look at me and I'm like, "yes, I know."

Jess: But. I bet you had to do a lot of research about growing asparagus to write - do a lot of research, potatoes and like asparagus.

Milo: I, I need to give a shout out to my good friend Julie Carrick Dalton a wonderful mama bear to the queer and trans community.

She's this cis-het white lady that - you wanna invite her to all the queer events she's so cool. She's so great. I hope she gets this. 

Jess: Every trans person needs at least five of those in their lives. Yeah. At least one - five is better.

Milo: Yeah, and she she's an author too. She writes mostly about like badass female scientists dealing with climate change. Wonderful book. She's excellent, she used to run a farm. She knew all this stuff.

So I called her up one day and I said, "Julie. How would you survive on a farm of two people for an entirety of a war?" And you would think she had this answer ready to go. She was like, "I know."

Jess: Wow.

Milo: So she told - taught me everything about potatoes. She taught me like everything.

Jess: Wow.

Milo: Any farm stuff in there, like 95% of that probably came from her. 

Jess: There's a fair amount of it, which is an - it's a really nice backdrop actually. Neutral to positive canvas for the rest of the material.

Milo: Yeah. And also, look how nice things are when you just leave people alone. Like it's quite pastoral but yeah, and I hadn't actually asked about asparagus. She just started talking about how you grow it because asparagus grows from crowns deep in the dirt.

What fascinated me about this is that these crowns will just grow every year in the spring. By themselves for sometimes a solid generation or two, depending on how long you tend to them.

Jess: I see, I see. 

Milo: And - okay. And again, you know me, and I love like ancestry and symbolism there. They are eating from the same plants, from the generations before them. People who have passed away. People who planted them first. And it's just - it's - I don't know, this beautiful thing of like time and generations continuing on as long as you cultivate them yeah. Asparagus.

Jess: I'll never look at asparagus quite the same way.

Milo: There's always a metaphor - you know, you know - if this book could do only one thing I'm glad that was it.

Jess: I am so grateful to Milo for bringing The Lilac People into the world and for sharing so generously about this creative architecture and history behind the story.

This history is long. It's rich and it's ours. The Lilac People officially debuts on April 29th, and you can find links to purchase in the show notes. I hope you'll pre-order, request at your local library, or share it with someone who needs to read this story. Join us next week for part two of our conversation where we'll answer some of the burning questions that I had, and I'm sure many of you do as well.

Talking about how does this history resonate to today? What can it teach us about surviving our current moment? And what we can always learn from our transistors. So until next time, take care of yourselves and each other, and I'll see you here again soon.

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