Julia sulin shin WRITes
There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must,” then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.
–letters to a young poet, rainer maria rilke
My favorite essays
THE DIASPORIC LENS: paracinematic forms, mediations, and representations in the asian american novel
A junior paper submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts — ADVISED BY SOPHIE GEE, PRESENTED AT Seton Hall Undergraduate Literature Conference, Returning to form: Genre, style, and structure in literary studies, SPRING 2025
Branded existence: The Oriental Woman’s Self-Conception through Commodity and Fetish in Severance and Insurrecto
FINAL ESSAY FOR MY FAVORITE CLASS IN ALL OF UNIVERSITY — WRITTEN FOR ASA 224: ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE, TAUGHT BY PAUL NADAL, SPRING 2024
Seeing Ourselves: Asian American Affect
WHEN “We” FINALLY APPEAR IN FILM — Written for eas 350: Contemporary asian american cinema, taught by steven chung, fall 2024
Creative writing
Warps
MY MOTHER ESSAY — written for ENG 291: ASian MOTHERS, taught by anne cheng, FALL 2025 & Published in Nass Lit, Spring 2025 edition
FIsh/CLOSETS
“Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the grown-ups?” — PubLISHED IN POSITIONS ZINE, SPRING 2023
nights
I can’t remember writing this, but it must have been in high school. THEREFORE, I can’t be embarRassed 🙂
reviews
The Impossibility of Truth and the hope of interpretation in Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s Whale
Published in POsitions Zine, Spring 2024
Still Life, JIA ZHANGKE
Written for HUM 234: East Asian Humanities II, Traditions and transformations, taught by Ksenia Chizhova and Xiaoyu Xia, Spring 2024
Love and Wieners in everything everywhere all at once
Freshman Fall semester writing exercise 🙂 — written for ENG 206: Making and Remaking Fiction, Taught by Sarah Chihaya, fall 2022
SOUR HEART, JENNY ZHANG
REFLECTION ON kaja silverman’s The acoustic Mirror and Jenny Zhang’s SOUR HEART — written for ENG 291: ASian MOTHERS, taught by anne cheng, FALL 2025
Anna May Wong, Shot by Carl van Vechten, 1932
How does one WRITE a photograph? — written for ENG 206: Making and Remaking Fiction, Taught by Sarah Chihaya, fall 2022
MISC
Neoliberal human development
On Anthony Veasna so’s “Human development” — WRITTEN FOR ASA 224: ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE, TAUGHT BY PAUL NADAL, SPRING 2024
Fractures of Constructed Asian American Identity in No-No Boy and Insurrecto
Part of a timed midterm, so I pulled an all nighter for this — WRITTEN FOR ASA 224: ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE, TAUGHT BY PAUL NADAL, SPRING 2024
The Setting of Asian America in Fifth Chinese Daughter and No-No Boy
Another part of the midterm — WRITTEN FOR ASA 224: ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE, TAUGHT BY PAUL NADAL, SPRING 2024
The woman that Loves Me
ESSAY ON MY MOTHER AND THE JAPANESE BREAKFAST SONG “THE WOMAN THAT LOVES ME,” LATER turned into “WARPS” — WRITTEN WINTER 2023
Sexuality, Space, and Subjecthood in sour heart
A very strange midterm essay — written for ENG 291: ASian MOTHERS, taught by anne cheng, FALL 2025
The Selfish Woman Writer
ON JANE AUSTEN’s UNDERRATED NORTHANGER ABBEY — written for ENG 206: Making and Remaking Fiction, Taught by Sarah Chihaya, fall 2022
The Effect of Cultural Differences on a Relationship: Marriage, Love, and Suitability in Min Jin Lee’s PACHINKO
My LAst High school ESSAY!! I thought it was so good when I wrote it :’) — WRITTEN FOR AP LITErATURE, TAUGHT BY MR. GILLESPIE, SPRING 2022
