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In <em>Monk</em>, the social structures that create disability have a relationship of reciprocal maintenance with the structures that sustain race. Specifically, I examine the moments in which Adrian&rsquo;s disability and other characters&rsquo; blackness creates tension. These scenes are typically understood as humorous, drawing on Adrian&rsquo;s disability and stock figures like the angry black man, Mammy, and the murderous hip-hop star. Yet, the commitment to these narratives remains tenuous because the tension between Adrian and the black characters is not always contentious, nor is it a consistently missed opportunity for nuance. Instead, I argue <em>Monk</em> reveals a more complex interplay between narratives of blackness, disability, and white liberalism. Namely, Adrian&rsquo;s awkward exchanges lay bare the tensions present and open up space to see that we read disabled and racial identities in contact according to a logic determined not just by ability, but also by race.

Octavia Butler depicts a character with physical or mental disability in each of her works. Yet scholars hesitate to discuss her work in terms that emphasize the intersection with disability. Two salient questions arise: How might it change Butler scholarship if we situated intersectional embodied experience as a central locus for understanding her work? Once we privilege such intersectionality, how might this transform our understanding of the aesthetics of the novel? In this paper, I reorient the criticism of Butler's work such that disability becomes one of the social categories under consideration. I read two prominent analyses of Butler's work because their interpretations—black feminist in orientation—centralize black female identity as a category of analysis. I contend these analyses grapple with ideas that can only be fully understood with disability as an integral portion of the discussion. Since categories of analysis like race, disability, and gender require and create cultural tropes and challenge accepted forms, I outline three components of Butler's aesthetic: open‐ended conclusions that frustrate the narrative cohesion associated with the novel form, intricate depictions of power that potentially alienate the able‐bodied reader, and contained literary chaos that upends the idea of ontological fixity.

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