Chase Joynt’s *Vantage Points* is a fascinating, genre-blurring exploration of family, media, and identity. Spurred by the discovery of a connection to Marshall McLuhan, Joynt delves into his family archive to examine legacies of childhood trauma and how we construct narratives about ourselves. The book's unique structure weaves memoir with vignettes and cultural analysis, using McLuhan’s *Understanding Media* as a lens to explore masculinity, media, and trans life writing. Thought-provoking and visually rich, this experimental work offers a kaleidoscopic look at personal and political histories, creating a compelling tapestry of ideas and experiences.

I love how the book draws connections to pivotal points in history, it gives a real sense of how the events of today is build on the events of yesterday. I appreciate the descriptions of images on the books but i would like to be able to see them to. Perhaps that would be possible if they were put on a website. The way the author makes references to cultural and historical points is enjoyable and paints a good picture of the wider context the historical events are connected to.

I’m not going to rate this book because I don’t know how to. Mostly because of how much of the technical/media-focused portions went over my heads. I know very little about media analysis, so I needed like, to be told how ‘media’ is actually defined in this context. What counts as ‘media’? Who the heck is Marshall McLuhan? (Context tells me he’s a media guy who is at least moderately known within his field. Is he widely known in popular Canadian culture? No idea). So I get the impression that the intended audience of this book does not include people who need a plain-language primer lol.

While there are lots of interesting social and personal observations, I sometimes struggled with Joynt’s sparse approach to writing. I assume this style is intentional, perhaps connected to McLuhan’s oft-included thesis statement that “the medium is the message,” however Joynt’s habit of quoting other writers and scholars without making a clear connection to the rest of the paragraph (or injecting a single statement of personal history into a section on media history, or a single line of history into a personal account) left me feeling like an English teacher wanting to write “So what?” in the margin. Perhaps the problem is that the author wants me to do most of the thinking for myself, and I am not confident enough to do so.

I don’t want to diminish the sensitive balance between Joynt’s disclosure of childhood sexual assault, complicated family history and thoughts on gender, and the media analysis used to frame it. It was an entirely unique (to me) way to think about formative experiences and trans identity, which has left me percolating. And I do really appreciate the efforts that were made to make this evidently visual book accessible within the audiobook format. In fact it worked well for me, because the author was able to reveal some of the intentions behind the visuals which wouldn’t have been evident to me, a self-confessed noob. But I think that there were probably layers to this book that went over my head because the creative and experimental approaches were beyond me.

" Vantage Points" by Chase Joynt is a quick and interesting read however I found it somewhat hard to follow with the cut in verbal descriptions of images in the book.

I just finished reading Vantage Points: On Media as Trans Memoir by Chase Joynt and I loved this book! I listened to the audiobook read by the author and it was great to listen to him tell his own story. This book made me remember reading Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! by Douglas Coupland back in 2013 and it’s referenced in this book. The medium is the message or the medium is still the massage is still relevant today. It’s very interesting to read about media from his trans perspective. So many amazing authors are referenced in this book including Douglas Coupland, Elliot Page, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Zoe Whittall and Judith Butler. I really liked this unique take on memoir.