Empire's Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper

by Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez

Overview

In Empire's Mistress Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez follows the life of Filipina vaudeville and film actress Isabel Rosario Cooper, who was the mistress of General Douglas MacArthur. If mentioned at all, their relationship exists only as a salacious footnote in MacArthur's biography—a failed love affair between a venerated war hero and a young woman of Filipino and American heritage. Following Cooper from the Philippines to Washington, D.C. to Hollywood, where she died penniless, Gonzalez frames her not as a tragic heroine, but as someone caught within the violent histories of U.S. imperialism. In this way, Gonzalez uses Cooper's life as a means to explore the contours of empire as experienced on the scale of personal relationships. Along the way, Gonzalez fills in the archival gaps of Cooper's life with speculative fictional interludes that both unsettle the authority of “official” archives and dislodge the established one-dimensional characterizations of her. By presenting Cooper as a complex historical subject who lived at the crossroads of American colonialism in the Philippines, Gonzalez demonstrates how intimacy and love are woven into the infrastructure of empire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478021315
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	02/05/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	43 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez is Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, author of Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai‘i and the Philippines, and coeditor of Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai‘i, both also published by Duke University Press.

Table of Contents

Archival Detritus, Fabrications, Second Takes, and Other Provocations
1. This Is Not a Love Story  1
2. Death Certificate, Partial  13
3. A General and Unruly Wards  15
4. The Flower of Cathay, Excerpts  28
5. Misapprehensions  30
6. The Farm Boy and the Unbiddable Wife  32
7. The Delicate Moonbeam  48
8. "Dimples": Innocence (Colonial Kink)  49
9. Stage Presence  67
10. Letters Lost at Sea, Imagined, Excerpts  69
11. The New Filipina, Kissing  72
12. Gossip: Fiction and Nonfiction  86
13. "It Girl" Meets General  89
14. Recipe for the Douglas  93
15. The Washington Housewife, the Hollywood Hula Girl, and the Two Husbands: Reinventions  94
16. Out of Place 111
17. 1st Filipina Nurse, Geisha, Little Sergeant, Javanese Nurse, Uncredited  112
18. Lolita's Lines  127
19. Bit Parts: Racial Types, Ensemble  128
20. Caged Birds  149
21. For Future Archives, Apocrypha, and Fictions  160
22. Death Certificate, Entire  165
23. The Suicide  167
24. Last Review  170
Acknowledgments  173
Notes  177
Filmography (with Roles)  199
Bibliography  203
Index  215

Editorial Reviews

"Vernadette Gonzalez's Empire's Mistress offers a welcome correction to the common practice of colonial subjects being written out of history. . . . It constitutes a fascinating account of a minor biography intersecting with a major biography and historical events as seen from the colonized periphery."--Delia Malia Konzett "Pacific Affairs" (6/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Empire's Mistress is a work of art--figuratively and literally--that unearths the engrossing life of Isabel Rosario Cooper. . . . It is an archetype of how archival research should be repurposed."--Luis Zuriel P. Domingo "Sojourn" (7/18/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Empire's Mistress is a clever reflection of both the disjointed American imperial archive and the non-linear life Cooper had invented for herself. . . . Gonzalez not only engages in interdisciplinary analyses and methodologies to study the archive, but beautifully interweaves multiple genres--academic prose, poetry, playwriting, and art--to speculate a historical narrative that dances on the fine line between fiction and non-fiction."--Kristin Oberiano "Western Historical Quarterly" (2/11/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"[Gonzalez] insists on a speculative archival reading that allows Cooper to move from being the object of the possessive to a framing that makes her a different kind of subject . . . ultimately centering and valuing the intimate knowledges formed and passed between women who experience the violence of empire."--Rachel Yim "Women & Performance" (6/6/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Gonzalez is . . . especially lively when she is highlighting her personal discovery of archival documents. . . . Her glimpses into early Manila and the colonial life of American soldiers who married Filipina women was fascinating, and the best-researched part of this tale."--Kirby Pringle "Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television" (3/31/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Empire's Mistress is a dynamic text at the cutting edge of transdisciplinary research and will appeal to lay readers looking for a juicy noir tale and to scholars of women's history, twentieth century US-Philippines political relations, and postcolonial and cultural studies. Gonzalez's writing against the archival grain is a pleasure to read."--Thea Quiray Tagle "Philippine Studies" (9/1/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"Gonzalez's book is part- excavation, part-celebration of Cooper, that puts the story of MacArthur and his mistress into a new context, and not necessarily in a sordid way. Gonzalez is mindful at all times that Cooper was a daughter of colonization. That is why you read this book, to see another small-scale, personal perspective of the U.S. Philippines relationship where colonial mentality is more than a massive headache."--Emil Guillermo "Philippine Inquirer" (3/9/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez crafts a gorgeous and meticulous portrait of one of the most intriguing women of the twentieth century, Isabel Rosario Cooper. Woven out of ghosts of texts and archival fractures and gaps, Empire's Mistress is a replete mystery tale, a feminist biography, a Hollywood story, an intimate study of Philippine-U.S. relations, and a masterful work of postcolonial noir. Above all, Empire's Mistress is a haunting, by which afterlives of empire address our contemporary dilemmas about how to articulate, frame, and center unspoken lives to tell history accurately. A deeply satisfying work of exhumation, Empire's Mistress makes complex history live, and I'm grateful for Gonzalez's unflinching, refractive, and always revelatory gaze on that history."--Gina Apostol, author of "Insurrecto"

"Imaginatively tracing the life of Isabel Rosario Cooper in and through the elisions and silences of the archives, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez makes a significant contribution to rethinking the process of archival research when it involves marginalized subjects whose existence appears sporadically in the historical accounts of others. A compelling read."--Vicente L. Rafael, author of "Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation"

From the Publisher

Vernadette Gonzalez’s Empire’s Mistress offers a welcome correction to the common practice of colonial subjects being written out of history. . . . It constitutes a fascinating account of a minor biography intersecting with a major biography and historical events as seen from the colonized periphery.

Pacific Affairs - Delia Malia Konzett

Empire’s Mistress is a clever reflection of both the disjointed American imperial archive and the non-linear life Cooper had invented for herself. . . . Gonzalez not only engages in interdisciplinary analyses and methodologies to study the archive, but beautifully interweaves multiple genres—academic prose, poetry, playwriting, and art—to speculate a historical narrative that dances on the fine line between fiction and non-fiction.

Western Historical Quarterly - Kristin Oberiano

Gonzalez is . . . especially lively when she is highlighting her personal discovery of archival documents. . . . Her glimpses into early Manila and the colonial life of American soldiers who married Filipina women was fascinating, and the best-researched part of this tale.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television - Kirby Pringle

Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez crafts a gorgeous and meticulous portrait of one of the most intriguing women of the twentieth century, Isabel Rosario Cooper. Woven out of ghosts of texts and archival fractures and gaps, Empire's Mistress is a replete mystery tale, a feminist biography, a Hollywood story, an intimate study of Philippine-U.S. relations, and a masterful work of postcolonial noir. Above all, Empire's Mistress is a haunting, by which afterlives of empire address our contemporary dilemmas about how to articulate, frame, and center unspoken lives to tell history accurately. A deeply satisfying work of exhumation, Empire's Mistress makes complex history live, and I'm grateful for Gonzalez's unflinching, refractive, and always revelatory gaze on that history.

Insurrecto - Gina Apostol

Empire’s Mistress is a work of art—figuratively and literally—that unearths the engrossing life of Isabel Rosario Cooper. . . . It is an archetype of how archival research should be repurposed.

Sojourn - Luis Zuriel P. Domingo

Imaginatively tracing the life of Isabel Rosario Cooper in and through the elisions and silences of the archives, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez makes a significant contribution to rethinking the process of archival research when it involves marginalized subjects whose existence appears sporadically in the historical accounts of others. A compelling read.

Motherless Tongues: The Insurgency of Language amid Wars of Translation - Vicente L. Rafael

"Gonzalez’s book is part- excavation, part-celebration of Cooper, that puts the story of MacArthur and his mistress into a new context, and not necessarily in a sordid way. Gonzalez is mindful at all times that Cooper was a daughter of colonization. That is why you read this book, to see another small-scale, personal perspective of the U.S. Philippines relationship where colonial mentality is more than a massive headache."

Philippine Inquirer - Emil Guillermo

[Gonzalez] insists on a speculative archival reading that allows Cooper to move from being the object of the possessive to a framing that makes her a different kind of subject . . .  ultimately centering and valuing the intimate knowledges formed and passed between women who experience the violence of empire.

Women & Performance - Rachel Yim

Empire’s Mistress is a dynamic text at the cutting edge of transdisciplinary research and will appeal to lay readers looking for a juicy noir tale and to scholars of women’s history, twentieth century US–Philippines political relations, and postcolonial and cultural studies. Gonzalez’s writing against the archival grain is a pleasure to read.

Philippine Studies - Thea Quiray Tagle

Empire’s Mistress is a dynamic text at the cutting edge of transdisciplinary research and will appeal to lay readers looking for a juicy noir tale and to scholars of women’s history, twentieth century US–Philippines political relations, and postcolonial and cultural studies. Gonzalez’s writing against the archival grain is a pleasure to read.

Philippine Studies - Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez