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In the initial chapters of the book Authentic, author Burey issues a provocation: commonplace injunctions to “be yourself” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are not harmless encouragements for individuality – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a combination of memoir, research, societal analysis and interviews – seeks to unmask how businesses co-opt identity, moving the burden of organizational transformation on to individual workers who are often marginalized.

Personal Journey and Larger Setting

The motivation for the book originates in part in Burey’s own career trajectory: multiple jobs across retail corporations, new companies and in global development, viewed through her perspective as a woman of color with a disability. The dual posture that Burey experiences – a push and pull between standing up for oneself and seeking protection – is the driving force of her work.

It arrives at a moment of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as opposition to DEI initiatives increase, and many organizations are cutting back the very structures that earlier assured transformation and improvement. The author steps into that terrain to contend that withdrawing from corporate authenticity talk – specifically, the organizational speech that reduces individuality as a collection of surface traits, peculiarities and hobbies, keeping workers focused on controlling how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not an effective response; we must instead reframe it on our own terms.

Minority Staff and the Act of Persona

Through detailed stories and discussions, Burey illustrates how underrepresented staff – people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, employees with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which self will “be acceptable”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people overcompensate by striving to seem acceptable. The act of “presenting your true self” becomes a display surface on which various types of expectations are cast: affective duties, revealing details and constant performance of thankfulness. In Burey’s words, workers are told to share our identities – but without the defenses or the confidence to survive what emerges.

According to the author, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but lacking the protections or the trust to endure what arises.’

Case Study: An Employee’s Journey

Burey demonstrates this situation through the account of Jason, a deaf employee who chose to inform his co-workers about the culture of the deaf community and communication norms. His readiness to share his experience – an act of openness the office often applauds as “genuineness” – briefly made routine exchanges smoother. Yet, the author reveals, that improvement was unstable. Once employee changes erased the casual awareness he had established, the environment of accessibility vanished. “All of that knowledge went away with the staff,” he notes wearily. What remained was the exhaustion of being forced to restart, of being made responsible for an company’s developmental journey. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be asked to share personally lacking safeguards: to endanger oneself in a system that praises your openness but declines to codify it into policy. Authenticity becomes a trap when organizations rely on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.

Author’s Approach and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is simultaneously lucid and lyrical. She combines intellectual rigor with a manner of connection: an invitation for audience to lean in, to interrogate, to dissent. For Burey, dissent at work is not noisy protest but ethical rejection – the effort of resisting conformity in workplaces that expect thankfulness for basic acceptance. To resist, in her framing, is to interrogate the narratives organizations describe about justice and acceptance, and to reject participation in practices that sustain unfairness. It may appear as naming bias in a meeting, opting out of voluntary “inclusion” effort, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is provided to the organization. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an assertion of self-respect in spaces that often reward conformity. It constitutes a practice of principle rather than opposition, a way of asserting that a person’s dignity is not based on institutional approval.

Reclaiming Authenticity

She also refuses brittle binaries. The book does not merely eliminate “sincerity” completely: rather, she urges its restoration. In Burey’s view, authenticity is not simply the unrestricted expression of individuality that business environment often celebrates, but a more deliberate correspondence between one’s values and one’s actions – an integrity that resists distortion by organizational requirements. Instead of treating genuineness as a requirement to overshare or adapt to sterilized models of candor, Burey urges followers to keep the aspects of it rooted in honesty, self-awareness and principled vision. In her view, the aim is not to give up on sincerity but to shift it – to move it out of the boardroom’s performative rituals and to connections and organizations where reliance, justice and answerability make {