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In the opening pages of the book Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: commonplace injunctions to “be yourself” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they’re traps. Her first book – a blend of memoir, research, cultural critique and discussions – attempts to expose how businesses appropriate personal identity, transferring the responsibility of corporate reform on to staff members who are frequently at risk.

Personal Journey and Larger Setting

The driving force for the book lies partially in Burey’s personal work history: different positions across corporate retail, new companies and in worldwide progress, filtered through her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and looking for safety – is the engine of Authentic.

It emerges at a time of general weariness with organizational empty phrases across the US and beyond, as opposition to diversity and inclusion efforts grow, and numerous companies are reducing the very frameworks that earlier assured transformation and improvement. Burey delves into that terrain to assert that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – namely, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a collection of aesthetics, peculiarities and pastimes, leaving workers concerned with controlling how they are viewed rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; we must instead reinterpret it on our individual conditions.

Minority Staff and the Performance of Identity

Via colorful examples and discussions, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, disabled individuals – learn early on to calibrate which persona will “be acceptable”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people try too hard by striving to seem palatable. The act of “showing your complete identity” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of expectations are cast: emotional work, revealing details and constant performance of thankfulness. In Burey’s words, workers are told to share our identities – but without the safeguards or the trust to endure what arises.

According to the author, workers are told to expose ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to withstand what arises.’

Illustrative Story: An Employee’s Journey

Burey demonstrates this phenomenon through the story of an employee, a employee with hearing loss who decided to educate his team members about deaf culture and communication practices. His willingness to talk about his life – a behavior of openness the workplace often applauds as “genuineness” – briefly made routine exchanges easier. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was precarious. When personnel shifts erased the casual awareness Jason had built, the culture of access vanished. “All the information departed with those employees,” he states tiredly. What stayed was the exhaustion of needing to begin again, of being made responsible for an company’s developmental journey. From the author’s perspective, this illustrates to be told to expose oneself absent defenses: to face exposure in a system that praises your honesty but refuses to formalize it into regulation. Sincerity becomes a pitfall when organizations rely on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.

Author’s Approach and Idea of Resistance

Her literary style is simultaneously lucid and lyrical. She blends intellectual rigor with a tone of connection: an offer for followers to participate, to interrogate, to oppose. For Burey, professional resistance is not loud rebellion but moral resistance – the effort of resisting conformity in environments that demand appreciation for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to challenge the stories organizations tell about equity and inclusion, and to decline participation in customs that perpetuate unfairness. It could involve naming bias in a discussion, choosing not to participate of voluntary “diversity” effort, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s personal life is made available to the institution. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of individual worth in settings that frequently encourage obedience. It is a habit of integrity rather than opposition, a method of insisting that a person’s dignity is not based on corporate endorsement.

Restoring Sincerity

She also refuses inflexible opposites. Her work avoids just eliminate “genuineness” completely: on the contrary, she calls for its restoration. For Burey, genuineness is far from the unfiltered performance of character that organizational atmosphere often celebrates, but a more intentional alignment between one’s values and one’s actions – a principle that rejects alteration by institutional demands. Instead of considering genuineness as a mandate to overshare or adjust to sterilized models of transparency, Burey urges readers to keep the elements of it based on sincerity, self-awareness and ethical clarity. According to Burey, the aim is not to abandon authenticity but to relocate it – to remove it from the corporate display practices and toward relationships and workplaces where reliance, fairness and responsibility make {