Wednesday May 6, 2026
6:00-7:30 PM
We are launching our very first book club! We invite you to join us in reading Shubha Sunder’s debut novel, Optional Practical Training, which explores themes of identity, race and immigration. Then, join us for an author talk at the West End Museum on May 6, 2026, with Shubha herself! Our discussion will also explore how input and expectations from others shape our sense of community, where we call home, and how “home” changes due to urban renewal, fading memories, changing communities and our own migration to newly adopted homes.
Complimentary soft drinks, wine and cheese provided at the event.
Reserve your spot at the link below. The first 10 registrants will receive a free copy of the book! Books will also be available to purchase at the event.
Headshot: Chris McIntosh
About the Book
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.
About the Author
Shubha Sunder is a 2025 Whiting Award winner and the author of Optional Practical Training, an immigrant novel in conversations that won the New American Voices Award and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her first book, Boomtown Girl, a short story collection set in her hometown of Bangalore, India, won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award. She currently teaches in the creative writing MFA program at UMass Boston.
This project is made possible in partnership with the West End Museum and the Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University.