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Throughout the beginning sections of the book Authentic, writer Jodi-Ann Burey issues a provocation: commonplace injunctions to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they’re traps. Her first book – a combination of memoir, studies, cultural commentary and discussions – aims to reveal how businesses take over individual identity, moving the responsibility of corporate reform on to employees who are frequently at risk.

Career Path and Larger Setting

The driving force for the work stems partly in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across corporate retail, startups and in global development, viewed through her experience as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that Burey faces – a back-and-forth between asserting oneself and seeking protection – is the engine of the book.

It arrives at a time of general weariness with organizational empty phrases across the United States and internationally, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs increase, and many organizations are scaling back the very structures that previously offered progress and development. Burey enters that terrain to contend that withdrawing from authenticity rhetoric – that is, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a set of aesthetics, peculiarities and pastimes, forcing workers concerned with handling how they are viewed rather than how they are treated – is not an effective response; instead, we need to reframe it on our personal terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Act of Self

By means of colorful examples and conversations, the author demonstrates how employees from minority groups – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, people with disabilities – soon understand to modulate which persona will “fit in”. A vulnerability becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by working to appear agreeable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of assumptions are placed: emotional labor, sharing personal information and continuous act of thankfulness. In Burey’s words, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the trust to endure what emerges.

According to the author, workers are told to expose ourselves – but absent the defenses or the confidence to withstand what emerges.’

Case Study: The Story of Jason

The author shows this dynamic through the narrative of Jason, a hearing-impaired staff member who chose to teach his team members about deaf community norms and communication practices. His willingness to talk about his life – an act of candor the workplace often commends as “genuineness” – briefly made daily interactions smoother. However, Burey points out, that advancement was precarious. Once employee changes eliminated the casual awareness he had established, the environment of accessibility disappeared. “All the information left with them,” he comments exhaustedly. What stayed was the weariness of having to start over, of having to take charge for an company’s developmental journey. From the author’s perspective, this demonstrates to be requested to reveal oneself without protection: to risk vulnerability in a structure that applauds your honesty but fails to institutionalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a snare when organizations depend on employee revelation rather than structural accountability.

Literary Method and Concept of Dissent

Burey’s writing is both clear and poetic. She combines scholarly depth with a style of kinship: a call for followers to lean in, to question, to disagree. According to the author, dissent at work is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the practice of rejecting sameness in settings that demand appreciation for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to question the narratives institutions describe about fairness and inclusion, and to reject engagement in rituals that sustain unfairness. It may appear as identifying prejudice in a discussion, opting out of voluntary “diversity” effort, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is made available to the institution. Opposition, Burey indicates, is an declaration of personal dignity in spaces that often reward compliance. It is a discipline of integrity rather than defiance, a approach of insisting that one’s humanity is not dependent on corporate endorsement.

Redefining Genuineness

She also refuses rigid dichotomies. The book avoids just eliminate “genuineness” completely: rather, she urges its restoration. In Burey’s view, genuineness is far from the unfiltered performance of individuality that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more thoughtful harmony between individual principles and personal behaviors – a honesty that rejects alteration by corporate expectations. Instead of considering genuineness as a mandate to overshare or adapt to cleansed standards of openness, the author encourages audience to keep the elements of it grounded in sincerity, self-awareness and moral understanding. From her perspective, the objective is not to give up on sincerity but to shift it – to move it out of the corporate display practices and to interactions and workplaces where reliance, justice and answerability make {