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Within the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey raises a critical point: everyday injunctions to “be yourself” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not benevolent calls for individuality – they often become snares. Her first book – a blend of recollections, investigation, cultural critique and conversations – seeks to unmask how businesses appropriate personal identity, shifting the responsibility of corporate reform on to individual workers who are already vulnerable.

Career Path and Broader Context

The motivation for the book originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in international development, interpreted via her perspective as a disabled Black female. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a tension between standing up for oneself and seeking protection – is the driving force of Authentic.

It arrives at a time of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and various institutions are reducing the very structures that once promised transformation and improvement. Burey delves into that arena to assert that backing away from corporate authenticity talk – specifically, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a set of aesthetics, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, forcing workers focused on handling how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; rather, we should redefine it on our personal terms.

Minority Staff and the Act of Identity

Via colorful examples and conversations, Burey shows how underrepresented staff – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, people with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which self will “be acceptable”. A weakness becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by working to appear agreeable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of expectations are cast: emotional work, revealing details and constant performance of thankfulness. As the author states, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but without the safeguards or the reliance to endure what comes out.

As Burey explains, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but without the defenses or the reliance to endure what arises.’

Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience

Burey demonstrates this phenomenon through the narrative of an employee, a deaf employee who decided to teach his colleagues about deaf culture and communication practices. His eagerness to share his experience – a behavior of transparency the workplace often praises as “sincerity” – for a short time made everyday communications easier. But as Burey shows, that advancement was fragile. Once staff turnover erased the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion disappeared. “Everything he taught left with them,” he comments exhaustedly. What remained was the weariness of needing to begin again, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. According to Burey, this is what it means to be told to share personally lacking safeguards: to face exposure in a framework that applauds your honesty but fails to institutionalize it into procedure. Authenticity becomes a pitfall when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.

Writing Style and Concept of Dissent

The author’s prose is both clear and expressive. She blends scholarly depth with a manner of connection: an offer for followers to lean in, to interrogate, to disagree. According to the author, professional resistance is not noisy protest but ethical rejection – the act of resisting conformity in settings that demand thankfulness for basic acceptance. To oppose, according to her view, is to challenge the stories institutions describe about fairness and belonging, and to decline involvement in customs that sustain inequity. It might look like identifying prejudice in a meeting, opting out of unpaid “diversity” effort, or establishing limits around how much of one’s identity is made available to the institution. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an declaration of personal dignity in spaces that frequently encourage obedience. It represents a discipline of principle rather than rebellion, a way of asserting that one’s humanity is not based on institutional approval.

Restoring Sincerity

She also refuses brittle binaries. Her work does not simply eliminate “genuineness” wholesale: rather, she calls for its restoration. For Burey, genuineness is not the unfiltered performance of personality that business environment often celebrates, but a more thoughtful harmony between personal beliefs and personal behaviors – a principle that rejects alteration by corporate expectations. As opposed to viewing authenticity as a directive to overshare or adapt to cleansed standards of candor, the author encourages readers to maintain the aspects of it based on truth-telling, personal insight and ethical clarity. According to Burey, the objective is not to abandon genuineness but to move it – to move it out of the corporate display practices and toward relationships and workplaces where confidence, fairness and answerability make {