Of late, Asian Americanist literary and cultural critics have turned their attention to “genre” fiction, especially popular genres that fall under the heading of “speculative fiction.” This chapter argues that this turn to genre – distinct from, though related to, the “genre turn” in Anglophone cultural production – is the latest installment in a perennial contestation over the objects and theories of realism. What appears to be attention to increasingly minute subgenres, moreover, is in fact evidence of a critical realist reading practice that is responsive to the increasing salience of Asia’s capitalist modernity relative to the account of racial formation that has traditionally grounded Asian American studies.