How does attention to the intimate help us understand the gendered and sexualized dynamics of empire, and the ways in which they continue to shape how we tell our stories in the present? Empire’s Mistress pieces together the life story of Isabel Rosario Cooper, a mixed-race vaudeville and early cinema star in Manila who became infamous for her liaison with General Douglas MacArthur during the height of American colonialism in the Philippines. It tracks the mobilities and relationships generated by the United States’ desire for the Philippine archipelago—and the ways in which colonized subjects—particularly women—turned those to their own advantage. The scattered and ephemeral archive of “women like her” whose cosmopolitan itineraries ranged from Manila, to Washington, D.C., and Hollywood, outline a life lived on the edges of power but always at the center of imperial desire. 

Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez is Professor of Ethnic Studies and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Empire’s Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper and Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai‘i and the Philippines. She is co-editor of Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai’i (and the Duke University Press decolonial guide series) and the forthcoming Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader.