William Saroyan's most celebrated work of short fiction - a boy's view of the American Dream. Aram Garoghlanian was a Californian, born in Fresno on the other side of the Southern Pacific tracks. But he was also part of a large, sprawling family of immigrant Armenians--a whole tribe of eccentric uncles, brawling cousins, and gentle women. Through these unforgettable, often hilarious characters Aram comes to understand life, courage, and the power of dreams. Whether it is fierce Uncle Khosrove who yells "Pay no attention to it" in any situation, Uncle Melik, who tries to grow pomegranate trees in the desert, or angelic-looking Cousin Arak who gets Arma into classroom scrapes, Aram's visions are shaped and colored by this tum-of-the-century clan. Like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, William Saroyan's brilliant short stories in My Name Is Aram work together to create a picture of a time, a place, and a boy's world-a truly classic account of an impoverished family newly arrived in America-rich in matters of the heart.

Contents:

• The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse
• The Journey to Hanford
• The Pomegranate Tree
• One of Our Future Poets, You Might Say
• The Fifty-Yard Dash
• A Nice Old-Fashioned Romance, with love Lyrics and Everything
• My Cousin Dikran, the Orator
• The Presbyterian Choir Singers
• The Circus
• The Three Swimmers and the Grocer from Yale
• Locomotive 38, the Ojibway
• Old Country Advice to the American Traveler
• The Poor and Burning Arab
• The Sword to Scoffers