So, taking the spirit of the question - authors with unique perspectives - if you haven’t read anything by Ursula Le Guin, you really owe it to yourself to do s

So, taking the spirit of the question - authors with unique perspectives - if you haven’t read anything by Ursula Le Guin, you really owe it to yourself to do so. For work that explicitly draws on other cultural backgrounds, Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James is fantastic, and someone else mentioned Nnedi Okorafor, whose whole catalog is great. Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series is also worth a read.