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Within the initial chapters of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, author the author poses a challenge: commonplace injunctions to “bring your true self” or “show up completely genuine at work” are far from well-meaning invitations for personal expression – they often become snares. Her first book – a blend of recollections, studies, cultural critique and conversations – seeks to unmask how companies co-opt identity, shifting the weight of organizational transformation on to employees who are already vulnerable.

Personal Journey and Broader Context

The driving force for the publication lies partially in the author’s professional path: multiple jobs across business retail, startups and in international development, filtered through her perspective as a woman of color with a disability. The dual posture that Burey faces – a tension between expressing one’s identity and looking for safety – is the core of her work.

It arrives at a moment of general weariness with corporate clichés across the US and beyond, as resistance to DEI initiatives grow, and many organizations are scaling back the very frameworks that earlier assured transformation and improvement. Burey delves into that arena to assert that withdrawing from the language of authenticity – namely, the corporate language that trivializes identity as a grouping of aesthetics, idiosyncrasies and pastimes, leaving workers concerned with controlling how they are seen rather than how they are regarded – is not an effective response; rather, we should reframe it on our personal terms.

Marginalized Workers and the Display of Self

Through detailed stories and discussions, the author demonstrates how marginalized workers – individuals of color, LGBTQ+ people, women workers, disabled individuals – soon understand to calibrate which identity will “pass”. A sensitive point becomes a disadvantage and people try too hard by working to appear agreeable. The effort of “showing your complete identity” becomes a reflective surface on which various types of expectations are cast: affective duties, sharing personal information and ongoing display of appreciation. In Burey’s words, workers are told to reveal ourselves – but without the defenses or the reliance to endure what comes out.

‘In Burey’s words, employees are requested to expose ourselves – but absent the protections or the trust to endure what arises.’

Illustrative Story: The Story of Jason

She illustrates this phenomenon through the story of a worker, a hearing-impaired staff member who decided to teach his co-workers about deaf community norms and interaction standards. His eagerness to share his experience – an act of openness the organization often praises as “authenticity” – for a short time made everyday communications smoother. But as Burey shows, that progress was unstable. When staff turnover wiped out the unofficial understanding the employee had developed, the culture of access dissolved with it. “All the information went away with the staff,” he notes wearily. What stayed was the weariness of being forced to restart, of having to take charge for an company’s developmental journey. According to Burey, this illustrates to be requested to reveal oneself absent defenses: to risk vulnerability in a structure that celebrates your transparency but declines to codify it into policy. Sincerity becomes a trap when organizations depend on personal sharing rather than structural accountability.

Literary Method and Notion of Opposition

Her literary style is both clear and lyrical. She blends academic thoroughness with a style of connection: an invitation for followers to participate, to question, to oppose. For Burey, workplace opposition is not loud rebellion but principled refusal – the act of rejecting sameness in environments that expect thankfulness for simple belonging. To oppose, from her perspective, is to interrogate the stories organizations narrate about justice and belonging, and to refuse involvement in customs that perpetuate unfairness. It may appear as calling out discrimination in a meeting, opting out of voluntary “diversity” labor, or defining borders around how much of one’s identity is offered to the organization. Dissent, Burey indicates, is an declaration of individual worth in environments that typically encourage obedience. It constitutes a habit of integrity rather than rebellion, a method of insisting that one’s humanity is not dependent on organizational acceptance.

Restoring Sincerity

Burey also rejects rigid dichotomies. Authentic does not merely eliminate “authenticity” entirely: instead, she advocates for its restoration. In Burey’s view, authenticity is far from the unrestricted expression of personality that business environment typically applauds, but a more thoughtful alignment between individual principles and personal behaviors – an integrity that opposes distortion by institutional demands. Instead of considering genuineness as a requirement to disclose excessively or adapt to sterilized models of openness, Burey urges followers to keep the elements of it rooted in truth-telling, individual consciousness and principled vision. From her perspective, the aim is not to abandon authenticity but to shift it – to transfer it from the executive theatrical customs and to relationships and offices where confidence, equity and answerability make {