Your Name is Nina Estrada Tamariz

Your mother has always described you as "exceptionally bright." You don't know if you are, honestly – you always feel a couple steps behind the other kids at school – but you love any opportunity to learn. You especially love science: you're always getting in trouble for climbing, wandering off, and having dirt under your nails. But you have to! It's the only way to get up close to look at the trees, their leaves, and the bugs that crawl across them and make your littler sisters shriek. You like your life, but you don't think life has been so kind to your mother. She brought you and your sisters here when you were five or so. She fled here to escape her husband – your father, technically, but you don't even remember him. He was so unkind that your mother fled even though she was six months pregnant with your youngest sister. She somehow managed to half-walk, half-hitchhike her way from one side of the country to the other while pregnant and with two children in tow. Mami's your hero. But most people don't treat her like a hero. She lives with HIV, so a lot of people don't treat her very well. She's also sick very frequently, especially when she can't afford the medication to manage her condition, which means often the only way she can make money is by begging. People are cruel to beggars: there have been so many days that your mom has come home hurt from being kicked. You've offered to go work to help, you don't mind, but she won't hear of it. She insists you stay in school. "Your brilliant mind is too precious of a gift to waste, my Nina. You will graduate and have a better life than this."