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In the initial chapters of the book Authentic, author Burey raises a critical point: commonplace injunctions to “come as you are” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are not harmless encouragements for personal expression – they often become snares. Her first book – a mix of memoir, research, societal analysis and interviews – seeks to unmask how businesses take over individual identity, moving the burden of organizational transformation on to employees who are often marginalized.

Personal Journey and Broader Context

The motivation for the publication originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: different positions across retail corporations, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, viewed through her background as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that the author encounters – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the core of Authentic.

It lands at a period of collective fatigue with organizational empty phrases across America and other regions, as backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs grow, and various institutions are reducing the very systems that earlier assured progress and development. The author steps into that arena to argue that backing away from the language of authenticity – specifically, the business jargon that minimizes personal identity as a set of appearances, quirks and hobbies, leaving workers concerned with handling how they are seen rather than how they are treated – is not a solution; rather, we should reframe it on our own terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Display of Persona

By means of vivid anecdotes and interviews, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women workers, employees with disabilities – learn early on to adjust which self will “pass”. A vulnerability becomes a drawback and people try too hard by attempting to look palatable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of assumptions are cast: emotional labor, revealing details and constant performance of thankfulness. According to Burey, employees are requested to share our identities – but without the protections or the reliance to survive what comes out.

According to the author, employees are requested to share our identities – but absent the defenses or the confidence to endure what arises.’

Case Study: 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 team members about deaf community norms and communication norms. His readiness to talk about his life – a behavior of openness the organization often praises as “genuineness” – temporarily made daily interactions more manageable. Yet, the author reveals, that advancement was unstable. When employee changes eliminated the casual awareness the employee had developed, the culture of access vanished. “All the information went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What remained was the weariness of having to start over, of having to take charge for an institution’s learning curve. In Burey’s view, this is what it means to be requested to share personally lacking safeguards: to face exposure in a system that praises your openness but refuses to codify it into regulation. Genuineness becomes a snare when companies depend on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.

Writing Style and Idea of Resistance

Burey’s writing is at once lucid and expressive. She blends intellectual rigor with a tone of connection: a call for readers to participate, to challenge, to oppose. According to the author, professional resistance is not loud rebellion but moral resistance – the act of opposing uniformity in workplaces that require gratitude for basic acceptance. To oppose, from her perspective, is to challenge the stories companies describe about equity and belonging, and to reject participation in customs that sustain unfairness. It might look like identifying prejudice in a meeting, withdrawing of voluntary “diversity” work, or defining borders around how much of one’s personal life is offered to the organization. Resistance, Burey indicates, is an affirmation of individual worth in spaces that typically reward compliance. It represents a discipline of principle rather than opposition, a way of maintaining that an individual’s worth is not dependent on institutional approval.

Reclaiming Authenticity

She also refuses brittle binaries. Her work does not merely eliminate “genuineness” wholesale: on the contrary, she advocates for its restoration. In Burey’s view, authenticity is not the unrestricted expression of individuality that business environment frequently praises, but a more thoughtful harmony between individual principles and personal behaviors – a principle that resists distortion by institutional demands. As opposed to treating authenticity as a mandate to reveal too much or adjust to cleansed standards of transparency, Burey advises audience to keep the parts of it based on honesty, individual consciousness and ethical clarity. According to Burey, the goal is not to discard authenticity but to move it – to remove it from the executive theatrical customs and into relationships and offices where trust, fairness and answerability make {