Please join us for a Q&A with Milo Todd, author of The Lilac People.
Milo (he/him) is co-EIC at Foglifter Journal, runs The Queer Writer newsletter, and teaches creative writing and history primarily to queer and trans adults. Heās received awards, accolades, and fellowships from such places as Lambda Literary, Tin House, Pitch Wars, GrubStreet, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The BookBrowse Book Club recently discussed his debut, The Lilac People.
Please use this space to ask Milo questions about his work. As a reminder, to reply to an existing comment click the grey Reply on the right side under the comment. To ask a new question, click the blue Reply button a little lower down.
Milo, thanks for being here! Please tell our group a little about yourself.
Thank you, Kim! And a big thanks to everyone for taking the time to read and discuss The Lilac People. It truly means a lot to me. My biggest hope for this book is to get it to as many people as possible so this history is remembered. (A nice update about The Lilac People: it recently became a finalist for the New England Book Award!)
Iām an author, speaker, and educator who otherwise spends his time reading, doing nerdy research about trans history, baking, assembling jigsaw puzzles, and playing video games.
Iām looking forward to your questions!
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Good morning, Milo! Congratulations on your award nomination. We all thought The Lilac People was an amazing novel.
Many of our readers were surprised to hear about the persecution of the LGBTQ during WWII and afterwards, as well as the fact that the trans community was actually gaining ground before the rise of the Nazis. How did you first find out about these elements of history?
ā¦ and how did you go about researching the historical aspects of the book?
I really enjoyed your book! I was aware that gay people were ostrasized in the world. I did not know that there was an effort by a scientist to ānormalizeā peopleās reactions and interactions with other people. Iām sorry, but I do not have the words to say what I mean without being offensive. even today, it is difficult to have an open conversation. Dr. Hirschfield was amazing. Why have we not heard of him? Where his works known outside of Germany?
Thanks for the question, Kim! Despite my knowledge of trans history, I didnāt know about this until I stumbled across a Facebook post way back when Facebook was still somewhat helpful. (I think this was around 2016.) The post said something like, āDid you know that when the Allies liberated the camps, they instead put all the queer survivors in jail?ā I looked this up, found out it was true, and that soon broke open all sorts of other important facts about the era, both post- and pre-WWII. As I uncovered more and more, I knew I had to do something with this information.
It was difficult. Not only was the subject matter difficult in itself, but finding it was just as hard. First Nazi Germany tried to erase all evidence of both queer people and the Nazi crimes against them, and then countries like the US attempted the same after the war was over. Thereās plenty thatās been lost forever.
The short version is I had to learn German in order to properly access what either was never translated into English or was translated incorrectly into English (when it came to how people or their behaviors were gendered).
One of the most helpful places was the Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft e.V. Forschungsstelle zur Geschichte der Sexualwissenschaft (the Magnus Hirschfeld Society Research Center for the History of Sexology) in Berlin. The folks there have spent decades collecting everything they can about Dr. Hirschfeld and the Institute. Their efforts and dedication are admirable.
Youāre doing great, Lin, thanks for the questions! Dr. Hirschfeld indeed dedicated his life to helping all manner of gay, queer, and trans people he could. The interesting thing is his work was absolutely known outside of Germany. Not only did he go on world tours educating people, he was applauded by famous scientists such as Albert Einstein and his Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin was a famous tourist attraction. People would visit from all over the world to visit the museum and education section.
The Nazi Party did everything they could to wipe him, the Institute, and LGBTQ+ people off the history books. They very nearly succeeded. This loss speaks to two important things: 1) How immense the impact is on the future when history is erased, and 2) how capable oppressed groups are at persevering against all odds.
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I immediately looked up that info, too, since I found it so hard to believe. I donāt know how anyone who saw what was going on in the concentration camps could be so cruel. Thank you for doing something with that information. What else did you find that surprised you? I was unaware that the Allies had the German citizens work after the war as part of their reparations, and that they were forced to look at pictures/artifacts from the concentration camps.
Do you think that completely rewriting history or totally burying it could happen today (to the extent that future generations would be ignorant of it)? Iād like to hope that there are so many digital records these days that obliterating history wouldnāt be possible. Book bans are possible of course, but do you think weād ever get to the point where people would condone actually destroying them?
Thanks for taking the time to learn German and bring this story to light. Did you travel to Germany as well, or were you able to do your research from here?
It seems like The Lilac People was very difficult to write. The emotional toll had to be intense. Was there any part of the story that gave you joy to write about?
Sometimes plots and characters take on a life of their own. Did you find you needed to make any significant changes to your initial outline for either one as the story developed? Did you run into any roadblocks?
I found the ending of your book fascinating. What went into deciding the fates of your characters? I especially appreciated that you didnāt go for the happy ending, that it was more ambiguous as to whether or not your characters would have a happy life in America.
(To blur a spoiler, highlight the text, then click the little circled + sign on the toolbar. Scroll to the bottom of the options and select āblur spoiler.ā)
Honestly, just about everything I learned surprised me. Another negative thing that I didnāt know was the first documented book ban was the burning of (primarily) the Institute of Sexual Scienceās library. Iād seen photos of that night in history books and such, but itād never been mentioned what exactly was being burned.
A positive thing I learned among many was that the Weimar Republic came up with the first known queer anthem, Das Lila Lied. Berlin at the time was a thriving center for queer and trans rights, community, and medical advances, and it was wonderful to see all the ways they influenced the rest of the world, up to the present day.
Great questions! I ended up never getting to Germany. The short version is I was saving up the money to go and my projected travel was April/May of 2020. Obviously, that ended up not working out. I had to move forward with the book without getting to physically see the sites I wrote about. I still hope to go one day, though.
Even with certain efforts being made in the US to erase aspects of trans existence, Iām not concerned about us losing the information we already have in its totality. Like you say, so much is digitized these days. Also, information is so shareable in our modern era that itās highly likely that at least someone has a record of a given thing on their hard drive, etc.
That being said, Iām more worried about the difficulty of finding information due to clutter. Thereās a great article in The Atlantic called, āArchivists Arenāt Ready for the āVery Onlineā Era,ā which talks about this in general. On top of just the general amount of (mostly unhelpful or otherwise messy) information online, thereās also plenty now thatās entirely made up or otherwise comprised of half-truths. Sometimes this is an honest mistakeāsuch as an influencer who gets super excited about a trans person in history and starts making content about it without fact-checkingāand sometimes this can be more maliciousāsuch as using AI to create fake content about trans people in order to make research that much harder. That also makes it easier for naysayers to point to authentic sources and proof of trans existence in history (especially when posted online) as equally fake.
I touch on this in a LitHub article called, āUncovering the Forgotten: The Struggle For Trans History, From Nazi Germany to Todayā:
In Nazi Germany, it was much easier to suppress information. But now in the age of the internet, itās more difficult to sweep things under the rug. The next best thing? Say the information you canāt suppress is wrong. Or better yet, fake. For an individual to otherwise still believe such information marks them not just as someone who misunderstands, but as someone so unhinged that theyāre now a danger to the country itself.
Anyway, this is my long way of saying Iām less worried about the destruction of information in the modern era, and more worried about the discrediting of information.
It was definitely tough to write. But the parts I enjoyed writing were (perhaps predictably) the scenes in the ābeforeā time when Bertie and the others would go to parties or clubs, etc. It was enjoyable to write those scenes, not only for the joy they involved in general, but knowing that this joy was historically accurate.
This may sound like Iām gloating, but I donāt often run into roadblocks since I donāt start writing a rough draft until Iāve finished all my research and plotted out a scene-by-scene outline. (I hate writing rough drafts, so this makes it go by much faster.) However, no amount of planning keeps surprises from happening. The biggest one for this book was the song, Das Lila Lied, was originally intended to be mentioned for flavor. However, as I continued to write the rough draft, I saw how influential it was to the characters. I made some major edits after the rough draft to incorporate the song in more, and this eventually influenced the bookās title.
Thanks for the blur tutorial! Iām going to just blur this whole reply, haha.
I always knew I was going to have an ambiguous or otherwise bittersweet ending. Part of it was intended as a nod toward how trans life in the US was its own continued struggle (and still is to this day). There was unfortunate irony there, as well as respecting the reality that there werenāt/arenāt many countries that provide solace for trans people. The reality for many of us is not finding a place thatās good, but rather a place thatās less bad.
The other thing was I knew Bertie could never get the closure he needed. As much as I wanted to have Gert alive at the end, waiting for him in NYC, I knew it would be a disservice to the reality of the situation. Countless families and friends never found out what happened to their loved ones, and it leaves a gap in their lives, their histories, and their emotional wellbeing. I wanted to respect that reality.
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Wow, I hadnāt looked at it from that perspective. Youāre right, of course. Itās hard to predict how future generations will look at all the conflicting information out there and come up with something thatās accurate. Thoughts about the best ways to fight that?
The article for Lit-Hub was really interesting. Thanks for linking to that. Iām stunned by the comments youāve received from publishers when you tried to get The Lilac People accepted:
āThis authorās one to watch, but nobody will ever believe this happened.ā
āAre you sure this is true? Because I know a lot about WWII and Iāve never heard about this before.ā
āAbsolutely groundbreaking, but I donāt think readers will get on board with this.ā
Itās very disheartening. You close with:
āThe Lilac People has suddenly received notable attention since January, and that attention continues to grow as the United States continues to spiral. As grateful as I am for all the kindness and enthusiasm and support, I also know why the attention is happening. Itās not because my novel is a piece of fiction. Itās because it suddenly looks quite real.ā
Iād like to hope that as more novels like The Lilac People get published, the more other similar novels will be better received by the mainstream publishers. Have you noticed any progress in this area since The Lilac People got published? Do you know of any other authors - published or not - who are writing historical fiction about trans individuals?