Shubha Sundra – Optional Practical Training

In 2006, when this novel is set, American immigration law allows students, scholars, trainees, teachers, etc., on temporary visas to have a year of practical training not required by the person’s basic program. Optional Practical Training. The novel covers just such a year in the life of Pavitra, a young woman from Bangalore, India, who has finished her bachelor’s degree in physics and gotten a job teaching at a private high school near Cambridge, Massachusetts. Told through a series of conversations Pavitra has with various people as she shapes her life, the novel provides a more nuanced portrait of the immigrant experience than that often featured in novels.

Optional Practical Training (Graywolf Press) is Shubha Sundra’s first novel. It won the 2025 New American Voices Award sponsored by the Institute for Immigration Research and presented at the annual Fall for the Book festival. She also is the author of an earlier short story collection, Boomtown Girl, set in her hometown of Bangalore, India. That book won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award.

Her individual stories and essays have appeared in Catapult, The Common, New Letters, Crazyhorse, and Narrative Magazine. Her work has received notable mentions in the Best American Short Stories anthology. She teaches in the creative writing MFA program at UMass Boston.

Borders are made without our permission and we really don’t have control over border crossing — we’re essentially at the mercy of the border guards.” - Shubha Sunder

Hosted by William Miller

Find out more about Shubha Sunder on her website.

You can purchase a copy of Optional Practical Training from Bookshop.org here. Or you can buy a copy at on independent bookseller near you. Check out the link here.

This episode is also available on our YouTube channel.

Key Takeaways

1. Immigration as a Liminal State

The novel explores the precarious “in-between” status of Optional Practical Training (OPT), where identity, stability, and future plans all hinge on visa structures beyond one’s control.

2. Free Will vs. Systems of Power

Through the historical case of Bhagat Singh Thind, the book examines how institutions shape identity — and how personal agency often exists within forces much larger than the individual.

3. Home Is Situational — Borders Are Not

While home can feel portable and internal, legal borders are rigid realities. The novel powerfully contrasts the emotional idea of home with the political reality of border enforcement.

4. Identity Is Formed in Conversation

Structured around pivotal conversations, the novel shows how what others say to us — and assume about us — shapes our evolving sense of self, especially as immigrants navigating unfamiliar systems.

#OptionalPracticalTraining

#LiteraryFiction

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