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In the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, author the author issues a provocation: typical directives to “come as you are” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they’re traps. Burey’s debut book – a mix of personal stories, investigation, societal analysis and conversations – seeks to unmask how companies appropriate personal identity, transferring the responsibility of corporate reform on to employees who are already vulnerable.

Personal Journey and Larger Setting

The impetus for the publication lies partially in Burey’s personal work history: different positions across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in global development, filtered through her perspective as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that Burey faces – a tension between expressing one’s identity and looking for safety – is the driving force of her work.

It arrives at a time of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across the US and beyond, as backlash to DEI initiatives mount, and various institutions are scaling back the very frameworks that once promised progress and development. The author steps into that landscape to assert that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – namely, the business jargon that trivializes identity as a set of surface traits, idiosyncrasies and hobbies, leaving workers focused on controlling how they are viewed rather than how they are handled – is not the answer; we must instead reframe it on our personal terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Performance of Self

Through vivid anecdotes and discussions, the author demonstrates how underrepresented staff – employees from diverse backgrounds, LGBTQ+ individuals, female employees, disabled individuals – soon understand to modulate which identity will “fit in”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by attempting to look agreeable. The act of “bringing your full self” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of expectations are projected: emotional labor, disclosure and constant performance of appreciation. As the author states, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the reliance to survive what emerges.

As Burey explains, employees are requested to share our identities – but without the protections or the reliance to endure what arises.’

Real-Life Example: The Story of Jason

She illustrates this dynamic through the story of an employee, a deaf employee who took it upon himself to educate his co-workers about deaf culture and communication practices. His eagerness to share his experience – a gesture of candor the workplace often applauds as “genuineness” – briefly made routine exchanges more manageable. However, Burey points out, that improvement was unstable. When staff turnover erased the informal knowledge Jason had built, the culture of access disappeared. “All the information left with them,” he notes wearily. What remained was the fatigue of having to start over, of being held accountable for an company’s developmental journey. In Burey’s view, this is what it means to be asked to expose oneself without protection: to risk vulnerability in a system that celebrates your honesty but refuses to institutionalize it into policy. Authenticity becomes a trap when companies rely on personal sharing rather than institutional answerability.

Literary Method and Notion of Opposition

Her literary style is at once lucid and expressive. She blends academic thoroughness with a style of solidarity: a call for audience to lean in, to interrogate, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, dissent at work is not overt defiance but principled refusal – the act of opposing uniformity in settings that expect appreciation for basic acceptance. To dissent, according to her view, is to challenge the stories organizations tell about equity and acceptance, and to reject involvement in rituals that perpetuate inequity. It could involve naming bias in a gathering, opting out of unpaid “diversity” work, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is provided to the company. Resistance, she suggests, is an assertion of individual worth in spaces that often praise compliance. It constitutes a discipline of principle rather than defiance, a method of maintaining that a person’s dignity is not based on institutional approval.

Redefining Genuineness

Burey also rejects inflexible opposites. Authentic avoids just toss out “sincerity” entirely: instead, she urges its reclamation. In Burey’s view, genuineness is not the unfiltered performance of character that corporate culture often celebrates, but a more thoughtful alignment between one’s values and one’s actions – a principle that rejects manipulation by institutional demands. Instead of treating genuineness as a mandate to disclose excessively or conform to cleansed standards of candor, the author encourages audience to preserve the aspects of it rooted in truth-telling, self-awareness and moral understanding. 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 to connections and workplaces where reliance, justice and accountability make {