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In the opening pages of the book Authentic, writer the author poses a challenge: commonplace advice to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a blend of memoir, studies, cultural commentary and discussions – aims to reveal how businesses appropriate personal identity, transferring the weight of organizational transformation on to employees who are often marginalized.

Career Path and Wider Environment

The driving force for the publication originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: various roles across business retail, startups and in worldwide progress, filtered through her background as a disabled Black female. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and seeking protection – is the engine of Authentic.

It emerges at a time of general weariness with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs mount, and numerous companies are cutting back the very systems that previously offered change and reform. Burey delves into that terrain to assert that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – specifically, the corporate language that reduces individuality as a collection of surface traits, peculiarities and pastimes, forcing workers preoccupied with managing how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not the answer; we must instead reinterpret it on our individual conditions.

Minority Staff and the Performance of Self

Via vivid anecdotes and interviews, Burey illustrates how underrepresented staff – individuals of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, employees with disabilities – soon understand to calibrate which identity 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 display surface on which various types of anticipations are projected: affective duties, revealing details and ongoing display of appreciation. According to Burey, workers are told to expose ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to withstand what emerges.

‘In Burey’s words, workers are told to expose ourselves – but lacking the protections or the confidence to endure what arises.’

Illustrative Story: An Employee’s Journey

The author shows this phenomenon through the narrative of Jason, a deaf employee who took it upon himself to educate his co-workers about deaf culture and interaction standards. His eagerness to discuss his background – a behavior of candor the organization often praises as “authenticity” – for a short time made routine exchanges easier. Yet, the author reveals, that progress was precarious. Once employee changes erased the informal knowledge he had established, the environment of accessibility vanished. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he states tiredly. What was left was the exhaustion of having to start over, of being made responsible for an organization’s educational process. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be requested to reveal oneself lacking safeguards: to risk vulnerability in a framework that applauds your honesty but fails to codify it into procedure. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when institutions rely on individual self-disclosure rather than institutional answerability.

Literary Method and Idea of Resistance

Her literary style is both understandable and expressive. She blends academic thoroughness with a style of connection: an offer for followers to participate, to challenge, to oppose. For Burey, dissent at work is not loud rebellion but moral resistance – the practice of resisting conformity in workplaces that expect appreciation for mere inclusion. To resist, in her framing, is to challenge the narratives institutions narrate about justice and belonging, and to refuse participation in practices that maintain injustice. It might look like calling out discrimination in a gathering, withdrawing of voluntary “equity” work, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is made available to the institution. Dissent, she suggests, is an affirmation of individual worth in environments that frequently reward compliance. It represents a practice of integrity rather than defiance, a approach of asserting that a person’s dignity is not based on organizational acceptance.

Restoring Sincerity

She also refuses inflexible opposites. The book avoids just toss out “genuineness” completely: on the contrary, she advocates for its restoration. In Burey’s view, authenticity is not the unrestricted expression of individuality that organizational atmosphere often celebrates, but a more intentional harmony between individual principles and individual deeds – a principle that opposes distortion by organizational requirements. As opposed to viewing authenticity as a mandate to overshare or adjust to sterilized models of openness, the author encourages readers to maintain the aspects of it rooted in truth-telling, personal insight and ethical clarity. From her perspective, the aim is not to discard genuineness but to shift it – to move it out of the corporate display practices and into relationships and workplaces where trust, equity and accountability make {