SOURCE: "Saroyan's Study of Ethnicity," in MELUS, Vol. 13, Nos. 1-2, Spring-Summer, 1986, pp. 45-55.

In the following essay, Shear studies Saroyan's treatment of ethnicity in the stories in My Name Is Aram.

At one time William Saroyan was America's most famous ethnic writer—more famous than ethnic, perhaps. In the late 1930s and early 1940s Saroyan exploded onto the literary scene as a true Wunderkind, the writer who was singlehandedly revolutionizing the form of both the short story and the drama. He was the man who refused the Pulitzer Prize and argued with Louis B. Mayer over the issue of artistic integrity. As a literary personality, he had an instinctive desire to be a part of the American cultural scene, to feel that he counted on such a stage. Yet at the same time he felt apart from it, hating the entrepreneurs of culture and his writing rivals with...