By O. Deng, TIWP Student

My mom can’t pronounce my name. She can’t pronounce a lot of other things either. Oriana means “golden” or “dawn” in Latin, but I don’t think she knew that when she decided to name me that. Maybe she just liked how it looked on paper, or how it sounded in her head before she ever tried saying it out loud. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I was named what I was, not because of what it meant, but because of how it felt. A name she could give, even if she couldn’t quite hold onto it in her mouth. And somehow, that feels fitting to be called something that means “light,” by someone who’s always reaching for the right words in the dark.