Acorn Soup

Since 1992, every issue of News from Native California has carried a feature loved and anticipated by its subscribers--a cartoon by L. Frank Manriquez. With backwards writing to slow the reader down, each cartoon places us in a whimsical and improbable world, challenging stereotypes about California Indians and preconceptions about life in general. Here we find Coyote in all his guises contradictions, the Creator of the Universe and the Buffoon, the Trickster and the Tricked, the Indian's Wise Fool. Always liminal, L. Frank's Coyote and friends have one foot in the modern world, the other in the ancient. Dressed in a suit and necktie, Coyote waits at a bus stop with a deer-head decoy mask and briefcase. Attending an art museum opening, he thinks of the wine and cheese. He's as modern as any of us, but still he's Coyote!