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Within the opening pages of the book Authentic, speaker the author raises a critical point: commonplace injunctions to “bring your true self” or “present your real identity in the workplace” are far from well-meaning invitations for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. Her first book – a blend of recollections, studies, cultural critique and discussions – seeks to unmask how businesses co-opt identity, shifting the weight of corporate reform on to staff members who are frequently at risk.

Career Path and Larger Setting

The impetus for the publication lies partially in Burey’s personal work history: different positions across business retail, new companies and in global development, filtered through her experience as a Black disabled woman. The dual posture that the author encounters – a back-and-forth between standing up for oneself and aiming for security – is the core of her work.

It arrives at a moment of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs grow, and various institutions are scaling back the very frameworks that earlier assured progress and development. The author steps into that arena to contend that backing away from corporate authenticity talk – that is, the business jargon that minimizes personal identity as a set of appearances, peculiarities and hobbies, keeping workers concerned with handling how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not a solution; rather, we should redefine it on our personal terms.

Underrepresented Employees and the Display of Identity

Through vivid anecdotes and conversations, Burey shows how underrepresented staff – employees from diverse backgrounds, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women, people with disabilities – quickly realize to calibrate which self will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people compensate excessively by striving to seem palatable. The act of “presenting your true self” becomes a display surface on which various types of expectations are cast: emotional work, sharing personal information and ongoing display of gratitude. In Burey’s words, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but without the defenses or the reliance to endure what arises.

As Burey explains, workers are told to expose ourselves – but without the protections or the confidence to endure what emerges.’

Illustrative Story: The Story of Jason

She illustrates this situation through the account of an employee, a deaf employee who decided to educate his colleagues about deaf culture and interaction standards. His willingness to share his experience – a gesture of transparency the organization often applauds as “sincerity” – for a short time made routine exchanges easier. But as Burey shows, that improvement was precarious. When employee changes wiped out the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the environment of accessibility disappeared. “Everything he taught departed with those employees,” he states tiredly. What remained was the exhaustion of needing to begin again, of being made responsible for an company’s developmental journey. According to Burey, this is what it means to be requested to expose oneself lacking safeguards: to risk vulnerability in a system that applauds your transparency but refuses to codify it into policy. Authenticity becomes a trap when institutions count on employee revelation rather than structural accountability.

Writing Style and Notion of Opposition

Her literary style is at once clear and poetic. She blends academic thoroughness with a style of connection: a call for followers to engage, to question, to disagree. In Burey’s opinion, dissent at work is not noisy protest but principled refusal – the act of opposing uniformity in environments that demand thankfulness for mere inclusion. To resist, according to her view, is to challenge the stories organizations narrate about fairness and acceptance, and to decline involvement in practices that maintain unfairness. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a meeting, withdrawing of uncompensated “inclusion” effort, or establishing limits around how much of one’s identity is made available to the company. Opposition, the author proposes, is an declaration of self-respect in spaces that typically praise conformity. It represents a habit of principle rather than rebellion, a way of asserting that a person’s dignity is not conditional on organizational acceptance.

Restoring Sincerity

She also refuses inflexible opposites. The book does not simply eliminate “genuineness” completely: instead, she calls for its reclamation. According to the author, authenticity is far from the unrestricted expression of individuality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more thoughtful alignment between personal beliefs and one’s actions – an integrity that resists distortion by corporate expectations. As opposed to treating authenticity as a mandate to reveal too much or adjust to cleansed standards of openness, Burey advises readers to preserve the elements of it grounded in sincerity, individual consciousness and principled vision. According to Burey, the objective is not to give up on genuineness but to shift it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and toward interactions and organizations where trust, fairness and answerability make {