Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Optional Practical Training

Optional Practical Training

Sunder, Shubha

Paperback

General FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $17.00

ISBN10: 164445324X
ISBN13: 9781644453247
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: Mar 4 2025
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.60
Height: 0.70 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.20
Language: English

* SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION 2025 FIRST NOVEL PRIZE *

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.

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