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Within the initial chapters of the book Authentic, writer Burey raises a critical point: commonplace injunctions to “come as you are” or “show up completely genuine at work” are not benevolent calls for self-expression – they can be pitfalls. This initial publication – a blend of memoir, studies, cultural commentary and discussions – attempts to expose how businesses co-opt identity, moving the responsibility of organizational transformation on to staff members who are already vulnerable.

Personal Journey and Wider Environment

The motivation for the work lies partially in Burey’s own career trajectory: different positions across business retail, emerging businesses and in global development, filtered through her experience as a woman of color with a disability. The conflicting stance that Burey experiences – a back-and-forth between asserting oneself and aiming for security – is the driving force of her work.

It lands at a time of collective fatigue with institutional platitudes across the United States and internationally, as resistance to diversity and inclusion efforts mount, and various institutions are scaling back the very structures that earlier assured transformation and improvement. Burey delves into that arena to assert that backing away from authenticity rhetoric – that is, the organizational speech that minimizes personal identity as a set of appearances, peculiarities and pastimes, leaving workers focused on controlling how they are seen rather than how they are handled – is not the answer; rather, we should reinterpret it on our individual conditions.

Minority Staff and the Display of Persona

By means of detailed stories and discussions, the author demonstrates how marginalized workers – people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, female employees, employees with disabilities – soon understand to calibrate which self will “fit in”. A weakness becomes a drawback and people overcompensate by striving to seem palatable. The practice of “bringing your full self” becomes a projection screen on which numerous kinds of anticipations are projected: emotional work, disclosure and constant performance of gratitude. According to Burey, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but absent the safeguards or the reliance to survive what comes out.

‘In Burey’s words, workers are told to share our identities – but lacking the defenses or the confidence to survive what arises.’

Case Study: Jason’s Experience

She illustrates this phenomenon through the story of Jason, a hearing-impaired staff member who chose to educate his co-workers about deaf community norms and communication norms. His willingness to talk about his life – a behavior of transparency the organization often commends as “genuineness” – for a short time made routine exchanges smoother. However, Burey points out, that improvement was unstable. After staff turnover eliminated the unofficial understanding Jason had built, the atmosphere of inclusion vanished. “Everything he taught left with them,” he notes wearily. What stayed was the fatigue of having to start over, of having to take charge for an institution’s learning curve. According to Burey, this is what it means to be asked to share personally lacking safeguards: to face exposure in a framework that applauds your honesty but refuses to formalize it into procedure. Sincerity becomes a pitfall when companies depend on personal sharing rather than organizational responsibility.

Writing Style and Notion of Opposition

The author’s prose is at once understandable and lyrical. She blends academic thoroughness with a style of connection: an invitation for readers to participate, to challenge, to oppose. According to the author, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the act of rejecting sameness in settings that expect gratitude for basic acceptance. To dissent, in her framing, is to interrogate the stories institutions tell about justice and acceptance, and to decline involvement in practices that perpetuate unfairness. It could involve calling out discrimination in a meeting, withdrawing of uncompensated “inclusion” effort, or establishing limits around how much of oneself is provided to the institution. Dissent, she suggests, is an declaration of personal dignity in settings that often encourage conformity. It constitutes a discipline of honesty rather than opposition, a method of maintaining that an individual’s worth is not based on organizational acceptance.

Reclaiming Authenticity

The author also avoids rigid dichotomies. The book does not simply toss out “genuineness” entirely: on the contrary, she urges its reclamation. For Burey, genuineness is not the raw display of character that business environment often celebrates, but a more deliberate alignment between one’s values and one’s actions – an integrity that resists distortion by organizational requirements. Instead of considering authenticity as a directive to reveal too much or adjust to sanitized ideals of candor, the author encourages audience to preserve the parts of it based on honesty, self-awareness and principled vision. In her view, the aim is not to give up on genuineness but to relocate it – to transfer it from the executive theatrical customs and into connections and offices where confidence, equity and responsibility make {