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In the initial chapters of the publication Authentic, writer Burey issues a provocation: everyday injunctions to “come as you are” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are not harmless encouragements for personal expression – they often become snares. Burey’s debut book – a blend of personal stories, investigation, cultural critique and interviews – aims to reveal how companies co-opt identity, shifting the burden of corporate reform on to individual workers who are often marginalized.

Professional Experience and Broader Context

The driving force for the book originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across corporate retail, emerging businesses and in worldwide progress, viewed through her experience as a Black disabled woman. The conflicting stance that Burey experiences – a back-and-forth between expressing one’s identity and aiming for security – is the driving force of Authentic.

It emerges at a moment of widespread exhaustion with organizational empty phrases across the US and beyond, as backlash to diversity and inclusion efforts mount, and numerous companies are scaling back the very structures that previously offered progress and development. Burey delves into that arena to argue that backing away from corporate authenticity talk – that is, the business jargon that trivializes identity as a grouping of appearances, quirks and pastimes, forcing workers concerned with controlling how they are perceived rather than how they are treated – is not an effective response; we must instead reinterpret it on our individual conditions.

Marginalized Workers and the Act of Persona

Via colorful examples and interviews, Burey illustrates how marginalized workers – people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, employees with disabilities – soon understand to adjust which persona will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a liability and people compensate excessively by working to appear acceptable. The effort of “showing your complete identity” becomes a reflective surface on which all manner of anticipations are projected: affective duties, disclosure and continuous act of appreciation. As the author states, we are asked to share our identities – but absent the safeguards or the reliance to withstand what arises.

‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but absent the protections or the trust to withstand what comes out.’

Case Study: An Employee’s Journey

The author shows this dynamic through the narrative of a worker, a deaf employee who took it upon himself to inform his co-workers about deaf community norms and communication norms. His willingness to share his experience – a gesture of candor the workplace often applauds as “sincerity” – for a short time made daily interactions more manageable. However, Burey points out, that advancement was unstable. After staff turnover erased the unofficial understanding he had established, the atmosphere of inclusion vanished. “All the information left with them,” he notes wearily. What was left was the fatigue of needing to begin again, of having to take charge for an institution’s learning curve. From the author’s perspective, this is what it means to be told to reveal oneself lacking safeguards: to risk vulnerability in a structure that praises your honesty but declines to codify it into regulation. Authenticity becomes a trap when companies rely on employee revelation rather than organizational responsibility.

Literary Method and Concept of Dissent

Her literary style is simultaneously lucid and expressive. She marries intellectual rigor with a manner of kinship: a call for followers to engage, to interrogate, to disagree. According to the author, dissent at work is not loud rebellion but moral resistance – the act of opposing uniformity in environments that demand gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, according to her view, is to question the narratives institutions describe about equity and inclusion, and to reject participation in customs that perpetuate injustice. It could involve naming bias in a discussion, opting out of voluntary “equity” work, or establishing limits around how much of one’s personal life is provided to the institution. Resistance, she suggests, is an affirmation of self-respect in settings that frequently praise conformity. It is a practice of honesty rather than rebellion, a approach of insisting that one’s humanity is not based on institutional approval.

Reclaiming Authenticity

The author also avoids brittle binaries. The book does not simply eliminate “genuineness” entirely: rather, she advocates for its reclamation. According to the author, authenticity is not the unrestricted expression of individuality that corporate culture typically applauds, but a more intentional alignment between personal beliefs and individual deeds – a honesty that resists distortion by institutional demands. Rather than viewing genuineness as a directive to reveal too much or adjust to sanitized ideals of openness, Burey urges readers to maintain the elements of it based on sincerity, self-awareness and ethical clarity. According to Burey, the objective is not to abandon genuineness but to relocate it – to move it out of the executive theatrical customs and toward relationships and workplaces where reliance, justice and responsibility make {