“Molecular Aesthetics: Race, Form, and Matter in Contemporary Asian American Literature” examines posthumanist aesthetics in post-1965 Asian American literature to trace racial formation at the molecular scale. Works by authors such as Ruth Ozeki, Larissa Lai, and John Yau are read through scientific discourses such as quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and disability to demonstrate how Asian American writers use both scientific and formal experimentation to contest the boundaries of the human undergirding generic expectations of ethnic literature. This project revises the emphasis on the individual subject within Asian American literary studies, unearths racial critique in works not typically read as concerned with identity, and demonstrates literature’s importance in studying racial form in an era of postracial discourse.