ABSTRACT
The story of Princess Urduja and her presence in Filipino popular culture points to the gendered, traumatic nature of empire, specifi cally American empire (McClintock 1995, 74). For Filipinos, this memory of a warrior princess who once ruled the South China Sea marks a truth countering colonial mentality, yet recent scholars insist this tale is the stuff of legends, not history. Urduja is a ghostly fi gure because, although dismissed by historians, she continues to haunt Filipino imagination.
