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Throughout the beginning sections of the book Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: typical advice to “come as you are” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are far from well-meaning invitations for self-expression – they’re traps. Her first book – a mix of recollections, investigation, cultural critique and discussions – attempts to expose how companies take over individual identity, transferring the weight of organizational transformation on to employees who are often marginalized.

Personal Journey and Wider Environment

The impetus for the book lies partially in Burey’s own career trajectory: various roles across retail corporations, startups and in worldwide progress, viewed through her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that the author encounters – a tension between standing up for oneself and seeking protection – is the driving force of her work.

It lands at a time of general weariness with corporate clichés across the United States and internationally, as backlash to DEI initiatives mount, and various institutions are scaling back the very frameworks that once promised transformation and improvement. Burey enters that terrain to assert that backing away from the language of authenticity – that is, the business jargon that trivializes identity as a set of surface traits, quirks and hobbies, leaving workers concerned with controlling how they are seen rather than how they are handled – is not a solution; we must instead reframe it on our own terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Performance of Identity

By means of detailed stories and discussions, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – individuals of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, people with disabilities – soon understand to adjust which persona will “pass”. A vulnerability becomes a disadvantage and people try too hard by attempting to look palatable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a display surface on which all manner of anticipations are projected: emotional work, revealing details and constant performance of appreciation. As the author states, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the trust to endure what emerges.

As Burey explains, we are asked to share our identities – but absent the protections or the trust to endure what emerges.’

Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience

The author shows this phenomenon through the narrative of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to inform his colleagues about deaf community norms and interaction standards. His willingness to share his experience – an act of candor the office often applauds as “genuineness” – temporarily made routine exchanges smoother. Yet, the author reveals, that improvement was precarious. After employee changes eliminated the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the culture of access vanished. “All the information left with them,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the weariness of needing to begin again, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. From the author’s perspective, this demonstrates to be told to reveal oneself without protection: to risk vulnerability in a structure that applauds your honesty but refuses to institutionalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a trap when companies count on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.

Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent

Her literary style is simultaneously lucid and expressive. She marries academic thoroughness with a manner of kinship: a call for followers to engage, to question, to dissent. For Burey, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the practice of resisting conformity in workplaces that expect gratitude for basic acceptance. To resist, according to her view, is to challenge the accounts institutions tell about justice and acceptance, and to decline participation in customs that perpetuate injustice. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a gathering, withdrawing of unpaid “inclusion” effort, or establishing limits around how much of oneself is provided to the organization. Resistance, the author proposes, is an affirmation of individual worth in environments that typically praise compliance. It is a practice of integrity rather than opposition, a method of maintaining that one’s humanity is not dependent on organizational acceptance.

Redefining Genuineness

Burey also rejects brittle binaries. The book does not merely discard “authenticity” completely: rather, she urges its reclamation. According to the author, genuineness is not simply the raw display of character that organizational atmosphere frequently praises, but a more thoughtful harmony between individual principles and personal behaviors – a principle that resists distortion by corporate expectations. Instead of treating authenticity as a requirement to disclose excessively or adjust to sanitized ideals of transparency, Burey advises followers to maintain the elements of it based on truth-telling, personal insight and moral understanding. In her view, the objective is not to give up on authenticity but to relocate it – to move it out of the corporate display practices and to relationships and workplaces where confidence, justice and answerability make {