Books about race and the struggle for equality feature prominently among the finalists for the National Book Awards announced Tuesday. The 25 honored titles include a satire of Hollywood’s Asian American stereotypes, a history of the forced relocation of Native Americans, a biography of Malcolm X and a YA novel about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Selected from almost 1,700 submissions in five categories — fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people’s literature and translated literature — the finalists are a strikingly fresh group: None of the authors has been a finalist for a National Book Award before, and almost a third are debuts. One of those debut authors, Scottish American writer Douglas Stuart, has impressed judges on both sides of the Atlantic. Stuart’s novel, “Shuggie Bain,” about a family in Glasgow, is now a finalist for a National Book Award, a Kirkus Prize and the Booker Prize.