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In the initial chapters of the book Authentic, speaker Burey poses a challenge: commonplace injunctions to “come as you are” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are far from well-meaning invitations for personal expression – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a blend of recollections, investigation, cultural critique and interviews – seeks to unmask how companies appropriate personal identity, transferring the burden of organizational transformation on to staff members who are often marginalized.

Personal Journey and Larger Setting

The driving force for the work originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: multiple jobs across retail corporations, startups and in worldwide progress, filtered through her background as a woman of color with a disability. The dual posture that the author encounters – a tension between asserting oneself and aiming for security – is the engine of Authentic.

It arrives at a moment of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the United States and internationally, as backlash to DEI initiatives mount, and many organizations are scaling back the very frameworks that once promised change and reform. The author steps into that landscape to contend that retreating from the language of authenticity – specifically, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a set of appearances, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, forcing workers preoccupied with controlling how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; rather, we should reframe it on our own terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Performance of Self

Through detailed stories and interviews, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, female employees, employees with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which self will “fit in”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by working to appear agreeable. The effort of “showing your complete identity” becomes a display surface on which numerous kinds of anticipations are cast: emotional work, revealing details and constant performance of gratitude. As the author states, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the trust to endure what arises.

According to the author, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but lacking the safeguards or the confidence to withstand what emerges.’

Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience

The author shows this situation through the story of Jason, a employee with hearing loss who chose to educate his team members about the culture of the deaf community and communication practices. His willingness to share his experience – an act of openness the organization often applauds as “genuineness” – for a short time made routine exchanges more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that improvement was unstable. After personnel shifts wiped out the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the atmosphere of inclusion vanished. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he comments exhaustedly. What stayed was the fatigue of being forced to restart, of being made responsible for an institution’s learning curve. In Burey’s view, this is what it means to be asked to share personally without protection: to risk vulnerability in a system that celebrates your honesty but declines to institutionalize it into regulation. Sincerity becomes a snare when institutions depend on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.

Writing Style and Concept of Dissent

Her literary style is both clear and lyrical. She marries intellectual rigor with a tone of kinship: an invitation for audience to participate, to interrogate, to oppose. In Burey’s opinion, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but moral resistance – the act of rejecting sameness in environments that require thankfulness for basic acceptance. To resist, from her perspective, is to question the accounts companies tell about fairness and inclusion, and to decline involvement in customs that perpetuate unfairness. It may appear as naming bias in a meeting, choosing not to participate of uncompensated “equity” work, or setting boundaries around how much of oneself is made available to the company. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an assertion of personal dignity in settings that typically praise conformity. It represents a discipline of integrity rather than defiance, a approach of asserting that one’s humanity is not conditional on organizational acceptance.

Reclaiming Authenticity

Burey also rejects inflexible opposites. Her work does not merely toss out “authenticity” entirely: rather, she advocates for its redefinition. In Burey’s view, genuineness is not the unfiltered performance of personality that corporate culture typically applauds, but a more deliberate harmony between individual principles and individual deeds – a honesty that resists alteration by institutional demands. Rather than treating sincerity as a mandate to disclose excessively or adjust to cleansed standards of candor, the author encourages readers to keep the aspects of it based on truth-telling, personal insight and moral understanding. According to Burey, the aim is not to give up on sincerity but to shift it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and toward interactions and offices where confidence, fairness and answerability make {