ABSTRACT
There are parts of Lynn's story that the author have grown to think of as part of how American undergraduates tell breakup stories. The story was a string of conversations, in which each medium that people used to communicate was marked. Lynn, the wronged party, has to figure out what was happening in the first place, and then she has to decide to confront her boyfriend. Media, both old and new, are part and parcel of how the people the author interviewed are performing the complicated daily tasks of living among other people. These breakup narratives become glimpses into specifically American ways that people understand their own and others' uses of media. A story about a breakup does not have to be a story about how the breakup happened. Japanese couples often discuss their efforts to figure out the right mix of dependence and independence when going through breakups or divorces, as Allison Alexy found in her anthropological research.
