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Throughout the initial chapters of the book Authentic, speaker Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: everyday injunctions to “come as you are” or “show up completely genuine at work” are far from well-meaning invitations for self-expression – they often become snares. Burey’s debut book – a blend of memoir, research, societal analysis and conversations – seeks to unmask how businesses appropriate personal identity, shifting the burden of organizational transformation on to employees who are already vulnerable.

Personal Journey and Wider Environment

The driving force for the work lies partially in the author’s professional path: different positions across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, viewed through her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that Burey faces – a tension between asserting oneself and seeking protection – is the core of her work.

It arrives at a period of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across the US and beyond, as resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and numerous companies are reducing the very structures that earlier assured change and reform. Burey delves into that arena to contend that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – namely, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a grouping of appearances, idiosyncrasies and interests, leaving workers focused on handling how they are seen rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; we must instead reframe it on our personal terms.

Minority Staff and the Act of Identity

By means of vivid anecdotes and interviews, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, people with disabilities – learn early on to modulate which persona will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people compensate excessively by striving to seem agreeable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which various types of assumptions are projected: affective duties, revealing details and continuous act of thankfulness. As the author states, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but absent the protections or the confidence to survive what arises.

According to the author, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but lacking the defenses or the confidence to survive what comes out.’

Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience

Burey demonstrates this phenomenon through the narrative of Jason, a employee with hearing loss who chose to educate his team members about deaf culture and interaction standards. His willingness to share his experience – an act of openness the workplace often applauds as “authenticity” – for a short time made daily interactions more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was fragile. Once employee changes eliminated the informal knowledge Jason had built, the environment of accessibility dissolved with it. “Everything he taught went away with the staff,” he comments exhaustedly. What was left was the fatigue of needing to begin again, of having to take charge for an organization’s educational process. From the author’s perspective, this illustrates to be told to expose oneself absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a framework that celebrates your honesty but refuses to formalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when organizations count on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is at once clear and lyrical. She blends intellectual rigor with a style of kinship: an offer for audience to engage, to challenge, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, dissent at work is not overt defiance but principled refusal – the effort of resisting conformity in workplaces that require appreciation for simple belonging. To resist, according to her view, is to question the accounts organizations tell about equity and acceptance, and to decline engagement in rituals that maintain injustice. It may appear as identifying prejudice in a discussion, withdrawing of uncompensated “inclusion” labor, or defining borders around how much of one’s personal life is offered to the company. Resistance, she suggests, is an declaration of self-respect in environments that typically praise conformity. It constitutes a practice of honesty rather than opposition, a way of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not dependent on corporate endorsement.

Redefining Genuineness

She also refuses brittle binaries. The book avoids just toss out “genuineness” wholesale: on the contrary, she advocates for its redefinition. According to the author, genuineness is not simply the unfiltered performance of character that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more intentional correspondence between one’s values and individual deeds – a honesty that resists distortion by corporate expectations. Rather than treating genuineness as a directive to overshare or conform to sterilized models of candor, the author encourages audience to keep the elements of it rooted in sincerity, self-awareness and ethical clarity. From her perspective, the goal is not to discard genuineness but to shift it – to move it out of the corporate display practices and into interactions and organizations where confidence, fairness and answerability make {