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In the beginning sections of the book Authentic, author Burey poses a challenge: commonplace advice to “come as you are” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they often become snares. This initial publication – a mix of recollections, research, cultural critique and conversations – aims to reveal how businesses appropriate personal identity, transferring the responsibility of organizational transformation on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.

Professional Experience and Broader Context

The driving force for the publication originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across corporate retail, startups and in international development, viewed through her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that the author encounters – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and looking for safety – is the driving force of Authentic.

It arrives at a moment of general weariness with corporate clichés across the US and beyond, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and various institutions are cutting back the very frameworks that once promised progress and development. Burey enters that landscape to contend that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – that is, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a collection of aesthetics, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, forcing workers concerned with handling how they are seen rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; we must instead reframe it on our personal terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Performance of Self

By means of vivid anecdotes and discussions, Burey shows how underrepresented staff – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, employees with disabilities – quickly realize to calibrate which persona will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people compensate excessively by attempting to look agreeable. The practice of “presenting your true self” becomes a projection screen on which various types of assumptions are placed: affective duties, disclosure and continuous act of gratitude. As the author states, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but absent the safeguards or the reliance to endure what arises.

As Burey explains, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but without the safeguards or the reliance to survive what comes out.’

Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience

The author shows this situation through the narrative of an employee, a employee with hearing loss who decided to teach his colleagues about deaf culture and communication norms. His willingness to talk about his life – a gesture of transparency the office often commends as “genuineness” – briefly made daily interactions smoother. However, Burey points out, that advancement was unstable. After staff turnover eliminated the casual awareness Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion disappeared. “All of that knowledge went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue of needing to begin again, of being held accountable for an institution’s learning curve. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be requested to reveal oneself without protection: to face exposure in a structure that praises your transparency but declines to institutionalize it into procedure. Authenticity becomes a pitfall when companies depend on individual self-disclosure rather than structural accountability.

Literary Method and Notion of Opposition

Her literary style is simultaneously understandable and lyrical. She marries academic thoroughness with a tone of solidarity: a call for readers to lean in, to challenge, to dissent. For Burey, professional resistance is not loud rebellion but ethical rejection – the effort of rejecting sameness in environments that require gratitude for basic acceptance. To oppose, in her framing, is to interrogate the narratives organizations tell about equity and belonging, and to decline engagement in practices that perpetuate unfairness. It may appear as identifying prejudice in a discussion, opting out of voluntary “diversity” work, or setting boundaries around how much of one’s identity is provided to the organization. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of personal dignity in environments that frequently encourage compliance. It represents a practice of honesty rather than rebellion, a method of maintaining that one’s humanity is not dependent on corporate endorsement.

Reclaiming Authenticity

She also refuses rigid dichotomies. The book avoids just eliminate “authenticity” entirely: rather, she advocates for its redefinition. According to the author, genuineness is not simply the unfiltered performance of personality that organizational atmosphere often celebrates, but a more thoughtful correspondence between personal beliefs and one’s actions – a principle that rejects distortion by corporate expectations. As opposed to treating sincerity as a mandate to overshare or conform to sterilized models of candor, Burey urges readers to maintain the parts of it grounded in sincerity, personal insight and moral understanding. From her perspective, the aim is not to give up on sincerity but to relocate it – to remove it from the boardroom’s performative rituals and into interactions and workplaces where reliance, justice and answerability make {