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Within the opening pages of the book Authentic, author Jodi-Ann Burey poses a challenge: commonplace advice to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are far from well-meaning invitations for personal expression – they’re traps. Her first book – a combination of memoir, research, societal analysis and discussions – attempts to expose how companies take over individual identity, shifting the weight of institutional change on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.

Professional Experience and Wider Environment

The impetus for the work originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: different positions across retail corporations, startups and in international development, viewed through her experience as a disabled Black female. The dual posture that the author encounters – a tension between standing up for oneself and looking for safety – is the core of her work.

It emerges at a time of widespread exhaustion with organizational empty phrases across the US and beyond, as resistance to DEI initiatives increase, and numerous companies are scaling back the very frameworks that once promised progress and development. The author steps into that landscape to argue that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – specifically, the organizational speech that trivializes identity as a collection of surface traits, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, keeping workers focused on controlling how they are viewed rather than how they are handled – is not a solution; instead, we need to redefine it on our own terms.

Minority Staff and the Display of Identity

Through colorful examples and conversations, Burey shows how employees from minority groups – people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, people with disabilities – quickly realize to adjust which persona will “fit in”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people try too hard by working to appear palatable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of anticipations are projected: emotional work, disclosure and ongoing display of gratitude. According to Burey, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to survive what arises.

As Burey explains, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the reliance to survive what emerges.’

Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience

The author shows this phenomenon through the story of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to teach his team members about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His eagerness to discuss his background – an act of transparency the workplace often applauds as “sincerity” – temporarily made daily interactions more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was unstable. When personnel shifts wiped out the casual awareness he had established, the culture of access dissolved with it. “All of that knowledge went away with the staff,” he notes wearily. What was left was the weariness of having to start over, of having to take charge for an institution’s learning curve. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be asked to expose oneself absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a system that applauds your transparency but fails to institutionalize it into policy. Authenticity becomes a pitfall when organizations count on individual self-disclosure rather than organizational responsibility.

Literary Method and Concept of Dissent

Burey’s writing is at once clear and poetic. She blends intellectual rigor with a manner of solidarity: an invitation for audience to participate, to question, to disagree. For Burey, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the effort of resisting conformity in workplaces that demand gratitude for basic acceptance. To oppose, from her perspective, is to interrogate the stories companies tell about equity and acceptance, and to reject participation in practices that maintain inequity. It could involve identifying prejudice in a meeting, opting out of voluntary “diversity” effort, or establishing limits around how much of one’s identity is made available to the company. Opposition, Burey indicates, is an declaration of self-respect in environments that typically reward compliance. It is a habit of principle rather than defiance, a approach of asserting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on organizational acceptance.

Reclaiming Authenticity

The author also avoids inflexible opposites. Authentic does not merely discard “genuineness” completely: on the contrary, she urges its reclamation. According to the author, authenticity is far from the unfiltered performance of character that corporate culture typically applauds, but a more deliberate harmony between one’s values and one’s actions – a honesty that opposes distortion by organizational requirements. As opposed to considering sincerity as a directive to overshare or adjust to sterilized models of transparency, Burey advises readers to keep the aspects of it grounded in sincerity, self-awareness and principled vision. From her perspective, the aim is not to give up on authenticity but to move it – to transfer it from the corporate display practices and into connections and organizations where confidence, equity and answerability make {