Author(s): Qiping Liu

Abstract: Since the publication of Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, storytelling has become a major narrative device in Chinese American literature. While some critics emphasize the importance of storytelling in the articulation of identity and in the examination of acculturation and cultural dislocation, others question its limitations and unreliability which seem to be recognized by some Chinese American women writers, such as Lisa See. To supplement the limited knowledge of first-person narrators, See employs tea as narrative devices in The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane. In addition, this novel includes written texts that supplement first person narration. A new-materialist perspective reveals that non-human things narrate or act. When Lisa See endows non-human things with narrative power, they are no longer inert objects but storied matter. Drawing on new materialism, this paper will address how non-human narratives and written texts can compensate for the limits of human narrators and play active roles in shaping the text’s narrative and aesthetic expressions.

Keywords: Tea, New materialisms, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

Article Info: Received: 17 May 2026; Received in revised form: 14 Jun 2026; Accepted: 19 Jun 2026; Available online: 23 Jun 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.113.76