‘Could you please come get me?’ M.I.A. says she used to work in a telemarketing call center selling software over the phone (thanks, Punjabi Boy). Could you get any more desi?

… she was working in a call centre selling computer software to people in Ohio. She’d once worked the same job in LA.

The strain of being so mainstream drove her into Compton

… having fallen in love with hip-hop, she was going to move to South Central LA and become a gangsta’s bitch. It was a move both rebellious and reactionary. ‘I’m glad I went that far into it. I was the best hoochie on the West Coast at the time. I had the best clothes ‘cos I was coming from England and really good at shoplifting. I had Versace on before Lil’ Kim started rapping about it ‘cos the only place I could steal at was Harvey Nicks, where it was sooo easy. So I studied, like, the whole thing out in Compton: how the best you could do is be there for your man, be really good at sex, throw barbecues in the park, have babies and keep that unit together with the money that you get.’

Sadly, her black audiences aren’t getting her — she’s not quite Maya Vanilli, but gangsta isn’t totally prêt-à-porter:

This audience don’t understand why she’s covered head to toe in a baggy Sri Lankan print blouse and billowy trousers with its flashes of green in the print, which turn out, on closer inspection, to be the Incredible Hulk’s fist.

But she does have compelling memories of poverty in Sri Lanka:

… malnutrition had left Maya without most of her teeth. One of her last childhood memories of Sri Lanka is having her gums cut open with rice grain. ‘They don’t even do it fast, it took 45 minutes. But I wanted teeth so bad … you don’t understand.’ She came to Britain waiting for them to grow in and would hold her lips over her gums, staring long hours at herself in the mirror.

I suppose ‘terrorist’ isn’t usually mentioned in the biodata:

… her mother met her father through an arranged marriage, having been told he was an engineer. ‘Ever since she was a baby she was raised to be the housewife that all Sri Lankan women are meant to be. She couldn’t play out the fantasy ‘cos she didn’t have a husband. Him going away was worse for her. All the women were like, “He didn’t even die? He just left you with two children, what’s wrong with you? Fuck him starting a revolution, he isn’t at home!”’
The girls were raised as if their father were dead. The founder of Eros (Eelam Revolutionary Organisation), he trained with the PLO in Lebanon, and was in one of four different factions set up in the Seventies to try to achieve an independent Tamil state for the tear-shaped island in the Indian Ocean. The Tigers were the largest group, but every time Sri Lanka got close to peace the four would fight over who would become leader of the Tamil nation. Thousands of boys died at the hands of the Tigers.

‘The Tigers killed two groups off, leaders and kid soldiers included. When it came to my dad’s group he said, “I don’t want to kill off all these boys for the sake of an ideal.” He gave up and walked away, and Eros eventually disintegrated.’

The tomboy finally blossomed:

Her mother… recently became a born-again Christian…

She was also the smallest kid in the whole school, let alone her year. ‘I had short hair and everyone thought I was a boy until I was 16. My sister was gorgeous, she looked like Neneh Cherry. Light-skinned, red lipstick, corkscrew curls. West Londoners, east Londoners, they’d hang outside school to look at her. She’d be like, “Maya, can you just go and hide?” ‘