"I think there's a deep loneliness to her life that cohabiting with her brother kept at bay-and, now that he's gone, she is forced to face it. As more of Kim's letters are delivered, Helen becomes invested in the narrative they form, as if she were piecing together a puzzle, one that, in some ways, echoes her own past. Kim's family is Muslim, from Pakistan."
"So there are three forms of religion in the story: Helen's evangelical Christianity, Kim's Muslim heritage, and the religious traditions of the Indigenous people whom Kim is studying. Was it important to you to have all three strands at play? I'm interested in the ways that the three religious traditions in the story overlap, inform one another, and occasionally create friction through proximity."
"In Brazil, Kim is an outsider who is neither white nor Indigenous but a third category. Because he is singular in this environment, his religious and cultural identities don't constrain his movements or ambitions but, rather, enable him to operate outside prescribed social boundaries. I was also amused by the idea that it's not Kim's being a Muslim that Helen finds distasteful but the fact that he's an anthropologist."
Helen faces profound loneliness following her brother's death and invests in the letters from Kim, arranging them into a narrative that mirrors aspects of her past. Kim's family is Muslim and from Pakistan, bringing together three religious strands: Helen's evangelical Christianity, Kim's Muslim heritage, and the Indigenous spiritual practices Kim studies. Helen's missionary work involved Bible teaching and contributed to the erasure of Indigenous traditions, leaving her spiritually adrift and curious, even envious, of Kim's faith. In Brazil, Kim occupies a liminal third category that grants him mobility beyond local social constraints, while Helen's discomfort centers on his role as an anthropologist.
Read at The New Yorker
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