12 of the Best Books by Black Authors That You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

This isn’t only an under-the-radar book, it’s one that covers a topic that should be getting much more mainstream attention: the long, complicated history of Black farmers in the U.S., the central role they’ve played in agricultural industries, and the challenges they face today. Author Natalie Baszile has curated an incredible collection of interviews, poetry, essays, recipes, oral histories, and excerpts of longer works, all of which celebrate Black farmers past and present.

If you enjoy smart, sharp, humorous essay collections in the vein of Samantha Irby, you should probably read this book stat. Lawson dissects pop culture, explains what it’s like online dating as a Black woman, delves into the power of Black music, and reflects on friendship, internet culture, and microagressions. Throughout, she is extremely funny, intellectually curious, nuanced in her analysis, and generally engaging.

This stunning collection moves from the Haitian revolution to contemporary Black life in America. Bailey writes with incredible precision and endlessly surprising imagery about diaspora, lineage, Caribbean history, the legacies of racism, journeying, nationhood, and so much more.

Fans of Weird Queer: take note of this under-the-radar gem from 2008! These stories are a deliciously eerie blend of reality and magic. They feature characters, mostly Black and queer, in situations that at first seem ordinary but turn out to be anything but. They take place in various time periods and incorporate elements of magic, horror, and folklore.

This triptych novel is about three Black women with albinism and the various unexpected ways their lives intersect. It’s set in Shreveport, Louisiana, and the setting is as vivid as the characters. If you enjoy character-driven stories, and books that play with structure in interesting ways, this one is for you. The three stories don’t come together in the ways you might expect — instead, Birdsong uses the space between the three sections to explore Black womanhood in all its infinite variations.

This was one of my favorite books from 2022, and I am still outraged that more people haven’t read it. It’s not often that I read a story collection in which I love every single story, but there are no misses here. The stories focus on the everyday lives of queer men in Nigeria, and Ifeakandu writes about both queer suffering and queer joy with incredible nuance and tenderness. He’s especially brilliant at capturing small moments of domesticity — there are dozens of scenes in these stories I won’t soon forget.

If you’re not ready for pandemic books, hold off on this one, but if you are, this is a moving and insightful book about the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. It’s structured as a series of short pieces, each told from a different POV: doctors and nurses, orphaned children, people who are sick and their loved ones, an ancient tree, a bat, the virus itself. The result is a book that feels both intimate and symphonic. It’s often heartbreaking, but it also highlights the possibilities of community care.

This lyrical debut by Kenyan writer Khadija Abdalla Bajaber won the Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize in 2021. It’s a coming-of-age story about a girl who goes searching for her missing fisherman father, and the ways the journey changes her — and helps her see herself more clearly. It’s part fable, part magical adventure, and part family drama.