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Within the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, writer Burey poses a challenge: everyday injunctions to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not harmless encouragements for personal expression – they often become snares. Her first book – a blend of recollections, research, societal analysis and conversations – aims to reveal how companies appropriate personal identity, moving the weight of corporate reform on to employees who are frequently at risk.

Personal Journey and Broader Context

The motivation for the publication lies partially in Burey’s own career trajectory: multiple jobs across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, viewed through her background as a Black disabled woman. The dual posture that the author encounters – a back-and-forth between expressing one’s identity and aiming for security – is the driving force of her work.

It emerges at a time of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across the US and beyond, as opposition to DEI initiatives increase, and various institutions are reducing the very systems that previously offered change and reform. The author steps into that terrain to argue that withdrawing from corporate authenticity talk – namely, the corporate language that reduces individuality as a collection of surface traits, peculiarities and hobbies, leaving workers concerned with controlling how they are perceived rather than how they are treated – is not the answer; instead, we need to reinterpret it on our personal terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Performance of Self

By means of colorful examples and interviews, Burey illustrates how employees from minority groups – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, female employees, disabled individuals – quickly realize to modulate which persona will “pass”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people try too hard by working to appear acceptable. The act of “showing your complete identity” becomes a reflective surface on which all manner of anticipations are projected: affective duties, sharing personal information and ongoing display of thankfulness. According to Burey, we are asked to share our identities – but lacking the safeguards or the confidence to survive what emerges.

‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the confidence to survive what arises.’

Illustrative Story: Jason’s Experience

She illustrates this phenomenon through the narrative of Jason, a employee with hearing loss who decided to teach his colleagues about the culture of the deaf community and interaction standards. His eagerness to discuss his background – a behavior of transparency the workplace often commends as “authenticity” – briefly made daily interactions easier. But as Burey shows, that progress was fragile. Once personnel shifts erased the informal knowledge he had established, the culture of access disappeared. “All of that knowledge went away with the staff,” 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 illustrates to be requested to share personally absent defenses: to face exposure in a system that applauds your transparency but refuses to formalize it into policy. Genuineness becomes a pitfall when organizations rely on personal sharing rather than institutional answerability.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Her literary style is simultaneously clear and lyrical. She marries scholarly depth with a manner of solidarity: a call for readers to lean in, to interrogate, to dissent. According to the author, workplace opposition is not noisy protest but moral resistance – the practice of opposing uniformity in workplaces that expect thankfulness for simple belonging. To resist, from her perspective, is to challenge the narratives companies narrate about equity and inclusion, and to reject involvement in customs that maintain injustice. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a gathering, opting out of voluntary “diversity” work, or defining borders around how much of oneself is provided to the company. Opposition, she suggests, is an assertion of personal dignity in settings that frequently encourage conformity. It is a discipline of integrity rather than rebellion, a approach of insisting that an individual’s worth is not based on corporate endorsement.

Redefining Genuineness

The author also avoids brittle binaries. Authentic does not simply eliminate “genuineness” entirely: on the contrary, she advocates for its reclamation. According to the author, genuineness is far from the unrestricted expression of character that business environment frequently praises, but a more deliberate harmony between one’s values and personal behaviors – a principle that resists alteration by institutional demands. Instead of considering sincerity as a requirement to overshare or adjust to cleansed standards of transparency, the author encourages audience to preserve the aspects of it grounded in truth-telling, individual consciousness and ethical clarity. In her view, the goal is not to discard authenticity but to shift it – to move it out of the corporate display practices and toward interactions and workplaces where confidence, fairness and answerability make {