Keynote
An elegantly inventive debut novel that offers a sharp new take on the immigrant story in post-9/11 America
Book Title
Optional Practical Training
Subtitle
A Novel
Cover Image
- “The novel coheres into a crystalline portrait of a woman straddling cultures and expectations while attempting to discover who she is. It’s a knockout.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Body
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.
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.
List Price
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About the Author
Credit: Chris McIntosh
Upcoming Events
Shubha Sunder reading and in conversation about OPTIONAL PRACTICAL TRAINING at Symposium Books
Date:
Location:
Symposium Books in Providence, RIview map
Free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.
Praise
- “Quietly subversive, this is an immigration narrative to undermine the various reductionist immigration narratives of our moment.”—Jonathan Frey, The Millions
- “The forty-some impressions illustrate an extraordinary breadth of human experience, both containing and defying stereotype—ensuring each chapter is weighted with the same messy complexity as a day in the real world.”—Asya Partan, The Rumpus
- “Gloriously inquisitive about an immigrant's peculiar position, at times delightfully combative, at other times wrenchingly gentle, Optional Practical Training is a novel that is always true to itself.”—Megha Majumdar
- “Optional Practical Training is as sharp, bright, and subtle as a blade hidden up a sleeve. Before you know it, it has sliced clear through the ether of absurdity that is immigrant life.”—Namwali Serpell
