Athena Diaz was born in 1988 to a Mexican father and a mother whose roots go back to Church of Christ ministers in Louisiana. She was one of three children living in a household where the father was an alcoholic who was physically (but not sexually) abusive to her at an early age. Her mother checked out of family life when Athena was three or four, by enrolling in a graduate program in mathematics. Athena remembers that one of the ways to be close to her mother was to be in math class with her and so she became, as a result, a model student, eventually graduating as valedictorian from her high school.