Optional Practical Training

by Shubha Sunder

An elegantly inventive debut novel that offers a sharp new take on the immigrant story in post-9/11 America

Told as a series of conversations, Optional Practical Training follows Pavitra, a young Indian woman who came to the US for college from Bangalore, India, and graduates in 2006 with a degree in physics. Her student visa grants her an extra twelve months in the country for work experience—a period known as Optional Practical Training—so she takes a position as a math and physics teacher at a private high school near Cambridge, Massachusetts.

What Pavitra really wants, though, is the time and space to finish a novel—to diverge from what’s expected of her within her family of white-collar professionals and to build a life as a writer. Navigating her year of OPT—looking for a room to rent, starting her job—she finds that each person she encounters expects something from her too. As her landlord, colleagues, students, parents of her students, friends of her family, and neighbors talk to and at her, they shape her understanding of race, immigration, privilege, and herself.

Throughout the book, Pavitra seems to speak very rarely; and yet, as she responds to the assumptions, insights, projections, and observations of those around her, a subtle and sophisticated portrait emerges of a young woman and aspiring artist defining a place for herself in the world.

Genres: Fiction, The United States Of America, Adult Fiction, Novels, Contemporary

256 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2025

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in anticipation of meeting the author in May. I really liked this novel which is a series of conversations. Pavitra has come to college in the US from Bangalore, India, graduating in 2006. Her student visa allows her to extend her stay for a year and she takes a teaching position in a private high school. Though she is teaching math and physics, she yearns to be a fiction writer. Following her through this post grad year, without the safety net of a college campus and dorm, we see how precarious a position Pavitra occupies in society. I cannot wait to meet the author!

[Lisa Eckstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pavitra, a citizen of India, has just graduated from a Pennsylvania university and moved to Boston to teach math and physics at a private high school. She's in OPT status, allowed one year for optional practical training, and if the teaching job works out, she'll be sponsored for a work visa. Everything about her life feels uncertain: whether the school will consider her a successful teacher, if she even wants to teach, how much to put down roots, and what it means to be marked as an other in America. Over the course of the OPT year, Pavitra's encounters with colleagues and friends raise and explore these questions.

I enjoyed reading this novel at a slow pace, a chapter or scene at a time, because the sections are mostly separate vignettes. Each episode focuses on an interaction with another character, and while some people recur, there isn't a strong continuing throughline or chronology other than the background of Pavitra's teaching and housing issues. Often the conversations are more descriptive than realistic, with the goal not to convey how people actually speak but to evoke scenes and ideas. This isn't my favorite style of fiction, but Sunder does it very well.

[Debbie (Vote Blue) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the perspective of this book. But the ending seemed anticlimactic to me.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll be back with a review in May. I'm meeting the author at a book event in Vermont. I'll need to withhold any comments until then.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a wonderful book! We follow Pavitra, a young Indian woman who’s living in Boston post-grad working as a teacher to maintain her visa status. Throughout the book we see her interact with coworkers, neighbors, friends, strangers who are all diverse in age, race, class. As the book continued it became clear to me that each chapter worked to hone into a different relationship and the perception the other person held about Pavitra. Her students and their parents were entitled and saw her as cold. Her coworkers often hit her with micro aggressions. Her friends were loving but those relationships also held the complications that come with adult friendships. Her cousin visiting from India felt removed from her but familiar at the same time. I could go on and on but all of this is to say the Shubha Sunder did an incredible job writing about the vastness of human interaction and the ways that perception can shape your sense of place in the world.

As always I’m so thankful to Graywolf for sending me this galley! I recommend picking up a copy on its pub date 3/4/25.

[Kim Alkemade · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous kaleidoscope of a novel that doesn't so much bring us into the consciousness of the main character, Pavitra—an aspiring writer from India teaching at an elite New England prep school under the one year extension of her student visa know as Optional Practical Training—as it allows us to see through her eyes as she interacts with various people who offer a cross-section of perspectives and reactions without ever being reduced to types. Gorgeously written and deeply felt, I loved being immersed in Pavitra's point of view.

[Nikita Kakkad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book and at parts I did, but I just think overall I didn’t click with the story. Still interesting to be reading about immigration at this current time in the world

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was wonderfully nuanced and I'm grateful to have won a paperback advanced reader copy via a Goodreads giveaway! Really admired Sunder's ability to craft deeply felt and complicated scenes, often with no clear answer/conclusion. The way people judge and treat Pavitra is wild. Or, so I thought initially. Then, as I continued to read, I realized how normalized poor treatment is in our society and how we all (or at least a good number of us) contribute to making other people's lives challenging when we could do the opposite! The writing in this novel was smooth and the content, especially around diversity and America, made for a compelling read.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pavitra, a new college graduate, teaches at a private school in Massachusetts. She's here on a temporary visa (for optional practical training) and hopes that her school will sponsor her for a green card. These vignettes, over the course of this year, explores her relationship with the school, students and her fellow teachers as well as finding her way in her personal life to achieve her goal of becoming a writer. Both a coming of age, as well as an immigration story, it's filled with frustrations and satisfactions.

I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was extremely thought-provoking and revealing about the continuing casual racism that still exists prominently in the US. I was ready to give it 4 stars, but then the abrupt ending knocked a star off for me. Spoilers below.
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I’m a DSO. It’s my entire job to help students like Pavitra navigate their F-1 status and through the OPT period. I entered the field about 10 years after this book takes place and in the near decade since I can attest to how things change and adjust based on whims. I don’t know entirely how OPT was managed in 2006-2007, but I do know this.
Pavitra was sent no less than a dozen emails from her university about what to expect at the end of her OPT window. She would have been told to report her H-1B change of status to get an updated I-20 with a “cap-gap”, or at least told to call the international office to find out what steps she needed to do to prepare for her transition from F-1 to H-1B.
It is not the job of her university to advise students on visa changes in Europe at the time, so that would have been a shock, but if she’s as practical and prepared as the rest of the book led me to believe, I have difficulty believing she didn’t research what was necessary to travel or even look at any possible changes coming up for this transit.

The abrupt ending is not bad. It absolutely speaks to a normal F-1 experience—you think everything is fine and you’re doing what you need to do to maintain your status, and suddenly one thing rips the rug out from under you. But it’s the “no one told me—“ that sticks in my craw, because she was absolutely told. I know in my soul she has an email she didn’t read thoroughly that she was told and just didn’t pay attention to or think it applied to her. It’s something I hear weekly and I have to point to exact emails and dates sent that yes, you did receive this information, you just didn’t think it was important.

[Maria Paula Guzman · Rating 3 out of 5]

★★ 2.75
This one is tough to write. I realized that I really struggle with books that don’t use quotation marks for dialogue—it made it hard to follow, and I couldn’t always tell if something was a thought or if someone was speaking, which threw me off. Honestly, I was bored a lot of the time, but the book touches on important topics. At first, it really felt more focused on her immigrant story, and I didn’t see much about OPT itself, which left me a bit disappointed—not because of the story, but because it seemed to be offering something different from what I expected, so that’s on me. However, it does highlight how every immigrant’s journey is so unique, and sometimes the only thing in common is the lack of U.S. citizenship. There were some real conversations, but the writing lost me, and by the end, I was just skimming. I was hoping the book would explore the lottery system and the challenges of getting an OPT or H-1B visa, but since she worked at a nonprofit, it didn’t apply. I really wish there had been an audiobook version; maybe that would’ve made it easier to get into the story. Overall, I think I came in with different expectations, and it just didn’t fully do it for me, though there were some real conversations and important issues. I’d love to see more stories on this topic.

[Dylan Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this one! Optional Practical Training, as told through a series of conversations, follows a young Indian woman in the early 2000's as she navigates a year in her life post-college as allotted by the student visa program. The narrator's unique identity and perspective shape really interesting insights about family, culture, and education. The range of characters we get to hear from throughout the book challenged my perspective on what it means to be culturally aware and sensitive in different spaces. I particularly liked the contrast between one character who viewed themselves as a "citizen of the world" versus one who didn't feel as though they truly belonged anywhere. The ending was really striking and apt for the story being told.

Couple of minor things bumped this from a 5-star for me, including the lack of quotation marks in dialogue (I understand the stylistic choice, it was just difficult to get into), and I thought certain sections dragged a bit once the points had been made, but otherwise I recommend it!

[T'Jae Freeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

book club pick for the month of April.

I think overall this was a good book that explored identity and place of belonging in a unique way and I think the structure of this book made its overall point/purpose very clear. Throughout this book you get multiple small POVs that puts out different experiences and ideas in regards to identity, goals, purpose, belonging, etc. that are connected to the main character as she navigates life in the US. The main character is also a teacher and I really loved those moments exploring education and how educational experiences vary depending on where you were raised.

Ultimately this book made me question my own sense of belonging and how I connect to places and it sort of made me a bit glum as I think about renting in the US, rising rent prices, rising interest rates for home buying, etc. It makes me question what home is and I think the whole idea of home has me rethinking what I want home to mean to me in a deeper sense.

[hiaa123 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Pavitra's story, an immigrant from Bangalore who takes up teaching high school Physics to finance her dream of being a writer. The novel is told through Pavitra's conversations with the people she encounters, colleagues, family, friends, neighbours, and strangers. Through these conversations, we are exposed to the perceptions and assumptions people place on her and there are plenty of micro-aggressions thrown in.

I think this book did a cool job of showing the difficulties and struggles of immigrating. It felt to me that Pavitra didn't really belong anywhere, no person felt completely safe and at home for her. Pavitra's perspective felt very isolated from everyone else, and though we are immersed in her experiences, I never truly felt like I got to know her as a person. An interesting read.

[Suzan Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title refers to an extra year of work experience that can be tacked onto a student visa in the U.S., which is what Pavitra is doing as the novel opens. She is just starting her first job, teaching physics at a private high school in Cambridge, Mass. But America high school students expect very different things from their teachers than what Pavitra experienced herself as a student in India. And Pavitra's real goal is to finish writing her novel, something her white-collar parents don't approve of as a career. The novel is written as a series of conversations, with family, friends, her fellow teachers, students, students' parents, and more. It was an interesting approach, a unique way to get to know a character, and I enjoyed it. I talk more about this book in this video, starting at 1:36: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYrSB...

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really know how to feel about this book. It seems incredibly pessimistic to me--most of the characters are fairly unlikeable, and overall, it leaves one with a sense that intercultural communication is a futile effort, and that people from other cultures have no hope to understand each other. The book is a series of conversations where people talk past one another, and no one seems to really listen or care about anyone else.

Given the title, I was hoping it would focus more on the unique immigration experience of students, but the OPT/H-1B was barely mentioned. In the end, I just didn't feel like the book said very much and there wasn't really any emotional/story arc.

[Lauren Maresca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The narrative structure centered on external dialogue lent the reading experience the feeling of being a fly on the wall. The mysteriousness of rarely hearing the protagonist's voice or thoughts piqued my intrigue in everything she did let "slip." I did find the trope of the protagonist being a writer of a novel that is somewhat implied to be book a bit hackneyed, especially after ready Yellowface which includes this plot device more explicitly.

This book touches poignantly on so many relevant topics, and I found the portion at the educators of color conference particularly well done. Sundar leaves the reader with much to contemplate.

[Virgil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd say this was a very nice novel and a fun read. The book is about a Indian (grew up in India) woman and how she uses her time in the US after receiving a undergraduate degree and now remaining in the US on Optional Practical Training (visa status). The book is a series of interactions the main character has with other people that she meets/interacts with during her time and in most of these interactions the main character rarely talks, allowing the author to essentially use these interactions as a way of showing common experiences young, Indian (from India) women experience during their time in America and the dynamics of that. Again, it's a fun read and not too long either that kept me thoroughly engaged.

This is a Virgil recommended read

[Libriar · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Pavitra, a young woman from Bangalore, just graduated from college in the U.S. Instead of going to grad school, she takes a job teaching physics at a private school in Massachusetts, hoping to have time to spend on her writing. Readers spend a school year with her as she navigates the politics of teaching in a private school, bad living conditions, and relationships. I especially liked the teaching parts of the book and her time at the Educators of Color conference. This is a discussable book about navigating a world filled with other people's expectations.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Optional Practical Training by Shubba Sunder is the story of Pavirta a young Indian woman studying in post-9/11 America. The story is told in discussions and sometimes it is confusing with the lack of quotation marks but still it is a compelling story of the immigrant experience in America.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Hilary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it for obvious reasons, this is the first time I’ve seen anything written about what it’s like for non-wealthy international students in the US - honestly it gets worse than that, but this was nice. I tend not to like this narrative style, i.e. the endless conversations, because they make me lose sense of time. Like The Idiot, which made me feel like I was trapped on a treadmill. It was fine here because it was a lot shorter, but it did end very abruptly because of it as well.

[Erica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m conflicted about this one. I really enjoyed the topic and the perspective it offered on the realities of being a foreigner in the U.S. I appreciated how the characters grappled with the meaning of nationality, identity, and home. However it also at times felt a bit contrived, the deep conversations a little too in-your-face, and perhaps overall just lacking in an element of subtlety that may have made the book feel more meaningful to me.

[Ajay Thakkar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed it! The fact that most of the book takes place in my hometown Boston made it easier to visualize what was happening. A must read for Indians who grew up in the States as well as those who are unfamiliar with how difficult it is for people to gain permanent resident status in this country.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging story of a young woman who comes to the U.S. from India who first goes to college in Pennsylvania and later is offered a “Optional Practical Training” position as a teacher in a small Boston school. The book is way more than that because of all the facets of this gal’s life (finding housing, dating, making friends…)
I think I related to this because of my years as a teacher.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pavrita comes to the US from India and graduates with a degree in Physics. She decides to extend her visa by teaching physics in a private high school. Shubha tells Pavrita's story through conversations she has with all the people she encounters in this extra year. I will be meeting the author soon and cannot wait to hear her speak!

[Daphne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t really say that I enjoyed this book so much as I admired it. The author brings such a clear and sharp eye to the topic of immigrant experience in America. Much of her lens is trained on how others respond to immigrants. Unexpectedly taut and real

[Autumn ✨]

Thank you to Graywolf Press for kindly providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will stick with me for a long time. It’s a fascinating portrait of human relations, international reflections, and what home and connection mean!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a joy to revisit Cambridge in the naughts with this young thoughtful and observant woman!

[Maya Hoffman · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was good nothing crazy but an interesting perspective related to the main character a lot and liked her narration