Teaching Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in Beijing

Beijing is a familiar place for Annie Dillard, who traveled there as a member of a six-person delegation of American scholars, publishers, and writers in 1982 and shared her Chinese experience in Encounters with Chinese Writers. In contrast to its vast popularity and canonicity in the Englishspeaking world, Dillard's masterpiece, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, is largely neglected by critics, scholars, and students in China. This essay examines the reception of Dillard in China. Particularly, based on in-class discussions of Pilgrim in a world literature course at the university level in Beijing, I explore the various approaches in reading and teaching the book from the perspective of East-West comparative poetics.