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In the beginning sections of Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work, speaker Burey issues a provocation: typical injunctions to “be yourself” or “bring your full, authentic self to work” are far from well-meaning invitations for self-expression – they’re traps. Burey’s debut book – a blend of personal stories, studies, cultural commentary and interviews – seeks to unmask how businesses take over individual identity, moving the weight of corporate reform on to individual workers who are frequently at risk.

Career Path and Broader Context

The impetus for the publication originates in part in Burey’s personal work history: various roles across corporate retail, new companies and in international development, viewed through her experience as a Black disabled woman. The two-fold position that Burey experiences – a tension between expressing one’s identity and looking for safety – is the driving force of the book.

It lands at a period of widespread exhaustion with institutional platitudes across the US and beyond, as opposition to DEI initiatives increase, and numerous companies are cutting back the very frameworks that previously offered progress and development. Burey delves into that terrain to assert that retreating from the language of authenticity – namely, the corporate language that reduces individuality as a set of aesthetics, peculiarities and hobbies, forcing workers preoccupied with controlling how they are viewed rather than how they are regarded – is not the answer; rather, we should reframe it on our own terms.

Minority Staff and the Display of Identity

Through colorful examples and interviews, the author demonstrates how underrepresented staff – individuals of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, women workers, people with disabilities – quickly realize to modulate which self will “fit in”. A vulnerability becomes a liability and people try too hard by attempting to look palatable. The effort of “bringing your full self” becomes a display surface on which various types of anticipations are projected: emotional work, revealing details and constant performance of thankfulness. As the author states, we are asked to reveal ourselves – but without the protections or the reliance to endure what comes out.

According to the author, employees are requested to reveal ourselves – but absent the defenses or the reliance to endure what comes out.’

Real-Life Example: Jason’s Experience

She illustrates this phenomenon through the account of Jason, a employee with hearing loss who decided to educate his team members about deaf community norms and communication practices. His readiness to discuss his background – an act of transparency the office often commends as “genuineness” – briefly made everyday communications more manageable. However, Burey points out, that improvement was unstable. When personnel shifts wiped out the informal knowledge Jason had built, the culture of access dissolved with it. “All the information went away with the staff,” he states tiredly. What was left was the fatigue 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 without protection: to risk vulnerability in a framework that applauds your transparency but refuses to codify it into procedure. Genuineness becomes a trap when institutions depend on individual self-disclosure rather than institutional answerability.

Author’s Approach and Concept of Dissent

Burey’s writing is simultaneously lucid and lyrical. She blends scholarly depth with a manner of connection: an invitation for followers to engage, to interrogate, to oppose. For Burey, workplace opposition is not overt defiance but moral resistance – the effort of resisting conformity in environments that expect gratitude for simple belonging. To dissent, in her framing, is to interrogate the stories companies describe about fairness and belonging, and to reject involvement in customs that maintain inequity. It might look like calling out discrimination in a gathering, choosing not to participate of unpaid “equity” effort, or defining borders around how much of oneself is offered to the institution. Resistance, the author proposes, is an assertion of personal dignity in settings that often reward conformity. It is a practice of principle rather than rebellion, a approach of asserting that a person’s dignity is not based on institutional approval.

Reclaiming Authenticity

Burey also rejects brittle binaries. Her work avoids just toss out “sincerity” entirely: on the contrary, she urges its redefinition. According to the author, genuineness is not the raw display of personality that organizational atmosphere typically applauds, but a more intentional alignment between personal beliefs and individual deeds – an integrity that resists distortion by corporate expectations. Rather than viewing authenticity as a directive to disclose excessively or conform to sanitized ideals of transparency, Burey urges followers to keep the aspects of it grounded in honesty, self-awareness and principled vision. In her view, the goal is not to discard sincerity but to move it – to transfer it from the corporate display practices and into interactions and offices where trust, justice and accountability make {