This project examines literary representations of race throughout the twentieth century. It traces the innovative visions of the nation by writers of color that strategically revise and claim the national imaginary at differing moments in US history. I investigate how racial categories mediate the tension between the political and economic imperatives of the nation-state. If DuBois claims that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line," I ask to what extent the meaning of race persists and has changed due to the altered powers of the nation-state under globalization. By comparing African American and Asian American literature from the 1930s through the 1990s, I locate two distinct periods in the historically contested relationship between race, labor, and the state. In the early twentieth century, the project of US nation-building is marked by Fordist capitalism. It creates and incorporates a white working class while simultaneously excluding racial minorities from the benefits of the welfare state. In the latter part of the century, global capitalism appears to embrace racial diversity. Flexible accumulation suggests the state's abandonment of its commitment to racial equality, as multiculturalism has become a method of labor management. Varying literary utopias and dystopias of the US attest to such a historical transformation. The multiracial utopias of Black No More (1931) and The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker (1998) express the contested relationship between formal and substantive citizenship throughout the century. The utopian longings in No-No Boy (1957) and The Intuitionist (1999) stress the mid-century conflict between domestic racism and global expansionism. The contemporary dystopian scenarios of Tropic of Orange (1997) and Parable of the Sower (1993) depict a US eventually destroyed by the racial contradictions of late capitalism. My project insists on the powers of cultural narratives in racial formation and political change.