Adams

In 2022, Kyra Davis Lurie heard a story on KCRW’s “Curbed Los Angeles” about the residents of South L.A.’s West Adams Heights, nicknamed Sugar Hill after a community of wealthy Black Harlemites. Learning about the sumptuous soirees Academy Award-winning actor Hattie McDaniel hosted in her Sugar Hill mansion, Lurie realized there was a hidden Black history waiting for her to unearth. But how she created the enthralling historical novel “The Great Mann” is a story that owes as much to Lurie’s ability to reinvent herself as it does to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” the iconic 20th century critique of the American dream, which provided a touchstone for the novel.

Lurie, 52, grew up in Santa Cruz, far from the neighborhood where McDaniel, Louise Beavers, Ethel Waters and other striving Black actors and business pioneers depicted in “The Great Mann” lived. While she visited family regularly in L.A., Lurie stayed up north, where she penned the light-hearted 2005 book “Sex, Murder and a Double Latte.” She quickly followed it with two more mysteries. Encouraged by her success, Lurie struck out for L.A. to pursue her dream of getting into a TV writers room. The 2007 writers’ strike deferred that goal, so Lurie pivoted to write three erotic novels which, she reveals, were “critiques of capitalism wrapped in a romance novel.”

By the time she heard about Sugar Hill and its famous inhabitants, Lurie was ready to take on a more nuanced challenge. But many literary agents weren’t receptive to her change of genre. “It was as if Marlon James had gone from writing comic books to ‘A [Brief] History of Seven Killings,’” she says, name-checking the famous Jamaican writer and his Man Booker Prize-winning novel. But as Lurie continued researching the neighborhood and its history, she knew she had to tell its story, even if using “The Great Gatsby” as her North Star proved problematic.

“I’m a huge Fitzgerald fan,” Lurie says, “even though there was a line in that book that always bothered me.” She’s referring to Nick Carraway’s reference to “two bucks and a girl” upon seeing three wealthy Black people passing by in a white-chauffeured limousine. “While it was probably used to get a laugh in 1925, it was demeaning,” Lurie says of the scene. “In the wake of the Red Summer of 1919 [when a record number of race riots and lynchings of Black Americans occurred in the U.S.] and the destruction of Black Wall Street in the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, Fitzgerald’s language says a lot about America’s cultural climate at the time.”

Was it subversive to use Fitzerald’s most famous novel to frame the story of a vibrant Black enclave whose prosperity rivaled that of Jay Gatsby and his ilk? Absolutely, Lurie says, adding, “Through a Black reimagining of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ I tried to marry a family’s story with a little-known part of L.A. history.”

The family story is told through the lens of Charlie Trammell III, a World War II veteran emotionally scarred by the violence he witnessed on the battlefield and at home in Jim Crow Virginia. Charlie arrives in L.A. looking for a fresh start and to reconnect with his cousin Margie, with whom he shares pivotal childhood experiences. But Margie, who now goes by the more exotic Marguerite, has shaken off the past and married Terrance Lewis, a vice president at Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co. The Lewises live with their son in Sugar Hill, along with McDaniel, Beavers and Norman O. Houston, the real-life co-founder and president of Golden State Mutual.

Soon Charlie is swept into the world of L.A.’s wealthy Black elite, a mix of real Angelenos like John and Vada Somerville, pioneering Black dentists and founders of Central Avenue’s famed Dunbar Hotel; singers-actors Waters and Lena Horne; and fictional characters including James Mann, the mysterious Black businessman recently arrived in Sugar Hill who hosts lavish parties unlike anything Charlie’s ever seen: “The air is flavored with flowery perfumes and earthy cigars. All around me diamonds glitter from brown earlobes, gold watches flash against brown wrists. The only things white are the walls.”

Mann befriends Charlie, treating the recently discharged veteran to his first hand-tailored suit and fine wine, but soon embroils him in his quest to reunite with Marguerite, the love of his life since the two met some 10 years before when they both lived in the South.

“Through a Black reimagining of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ I tried to marry a family’s story with a little-known part of L.A. history,” Kyra Davis Lurie said.

(Yvette Roman Photography)

Like Fitzgerald’s classic juxtaposition of West Egg and East Egg in “Gatsby,” “The Great Mann” is about new money versus old — interlopers like Mann and the entertainers versus businesspeople like Houston and the Somervilles. But Lurie “tried not to invent flaws” in her historical figures by doing her homework, sourcing accounts in Black newspapers, biographies and even letters between Houston and NAACP leader Walter White to depict these frictions.

“The Great Mann” is also about people reinventing themselves amid the realities and contradictions of the time. Like Black actors who played maids but employed Black “help” in real life. Or the controversy over the stereotypically demeaning roles Black actors depicted. Chief among them was Delilah Johnson, the subservient Black maid portrayed by Beavers in the 1934 film “Imitation of Life.” It’s a debate that’s introduced in “The Great Mann” when Marguerite and Terrance tell Charlie that Beavers’ home, where he will be staying and which is much grander than theirs, is paid for “with Black shame.” Also addressed in the novel are touchier subjects like White’s advocacy for the lighter-skinned Horne to get roles over her darker-skinned colleagues like McDaniel or Beavers.

But the engine that fires up the plot of “The Great Mann,” and which sets it apart from “Gatsby,” is the battle Black creatives and business owners faced to hold onto their properties. A clause placed in thousands of L.A. property deeds in 1902 restricted housing covenants at the time West Adams Heights and many other L.A. County communities were developed, prohibiting homes from being sold to anyone “other than the white or Caucasian race.” But some white sellers sold property to Black buyers anyway, who then had to fight white groups — like the West Adams Heights Improvement Assn. — to prevent eviction from their own homes.

To say how Sugar Hill’s Black residents fared in court would spoil the enjoyment of this suspenseful tale, which has put Lurie on a new path in writing historical fiction. She has another project percolating, but for now, she’s just grateful to have found her niche. “It’s been a journey,” she says of the twists and turns of her writing life, “but writing about historical Black lives feels like home to me, what I was meant to do.”

Lurie will be discussing “The Great Mann” at Vroman’s Bookstore at 7 p.m. June 10; Diesel, a Bookstore at 6:30 p.m. June 11; and Chevalier’s Books at 6:30 p.m. June 19.

North Salinas High sophomore Clara Adams ran the fastest time in the girls’ 400-meter finals at the CIF State Track & Field Finals last weekend.

She crossed the finish line .28 seconds ahead of her closest competitor.

But Adams is not the state champion. She was stripped of that title after she used a fire extinguisher to spray her cleats while on the field inside the track moments after the race.

“I was robbed,” Adams, 16, told The Times shortly after being disqualified from that event as well the 200 finals, which took place later in the meet.

Adams said CIF officials told her that she was being disqualified because she had been “unsportsmanlike,” but that’s not how she saw it at all.

“I was having fun,” Adams said, noting her win in the 400 marked her first state title. “I’d never won something like that before, and they took it away from me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

She added: “I worked really hard for it and they took it from me, and I don’t know what to do.”

Days later, David Adams, who said he is the sprint coach at North Salinas, told The Times his daughter was “doing better” but still trying to cope with everything that unfolded Saturday afternoon at Buchanan High in Clovis.

“Clara’s hurt. She’s hurt right now,” David Adams said Wednesday. “She’s better today than Saturday. Saturday was fresh. It just happened. It was a shock. She felt numb. They made her sit there and watch while they put those other girls on the podium, knowing Clara’s the fastest 400-meter runner in the state of California.”

Clara Adams has been running competitively since age 6, her father said. She finished fourth in the 400 at last year’s state meet and won the event with a state-best time of 53.23 at the Central Coast Section championships last month. After posting the top qualifying time in Friday’s preliminaries, Adams surged ahead of Madison Mosby of St. Mary’s Academy in Inglewood to win the race with a time of 53.24.

Immediately afterward, Adams walked over to the wall in front of the stands and found her father, who reached down and handed her what he described as a “small” fire extinguisher. She then walked back across the track into the grass, where she sprayed her cleats as if she was putting out a fire — a move her father said was a tribute to former U.S. sprinter Maurice Greene, who similarly celebrated his win in the 100 at the 2004 Home Depot Invitational in Carson.

CIF officials apparently were not amused and disqualified Adams on the spot, awarding first place to Mosby. According to rules established by the National Federation of State High School Assns., “unsporting conduct” is defined as behavior that includes but is not limited to “disrespectfully addressing an official, any flagrant behavior, intentional contact, taunting, criticizing or using profanity directed toward someone.” The penalty is disqualification from the event in which the behavior took place and further competition in the meet.

The CIF did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.

According to David Adams, the officials “were really nasty” toward his daughter. They “tugged on her arm,” he said, “they were screaming in her face. I could hear it from where I was at. I could see it — I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but they were just really nasty.”

Clara Adams said she specifically asked the officials to speak with her father about the disqualification, but they refused.

“They kept telling me, ‘It’s OK,’ and I was telling them, ‘It’s not OK,’ and they didn’t care,” she said. “They were trying to smile in my face, like them telling me ‘no’ amused them or something.”

David Adams said the officials would only speak to North Salinas head coach Alan Green, who declined to speak to The Times for this story.

“They told him that it was unsportsmanlike conduct,” David Adams said of the officials’ discussion with Green. “We were asking for the rule, the specific rule of what she did, and they didn’t really give anything. It was more of a gray area that gives them discretion to pick and choose what they feel is unsportsmanlike conduct.”

Adams disputes that his daughter behaved in a manner that could be considered unsportsmanlike.

“Looking at the film, Clara is nowhere near any opponent,” he said. “She’s off the track, on the grass. Her opponents are long gone off the track already, so she wasn’t in their face. It was a father-daughter moment. … She did it off the track because she didn’t want to seem disrespectful toward nobody. And they still found a reason to take her title away. They didn’t give her a warning or anything.”

He added that his daughter is a “very humble, really sweet kid.”

“I take responsibility for the situation. I’m taking full responsibility,” he said. “Clara has run several championship races and won and walked off the track. It’s just weird that she celebrates one time and now people, these strangers, these middle-aged people want to chase after her character?”

Greene, the four-time Olympic medalist who inspired Clara’s celebration, told KSBW-TV in Salinas that the CIF should reconsider its decision.

“If [the celebration] was away from everyone and not interfering with anyone, I would say reinstate her,” Greene said.

David Adams said he is trying to make that happen but so far the CIF won’t return his calls .

“We have an attorney on standby right now,” he said. “I don’t want to take it there, but I will fight this all the way. As long as I’m breathing I’m gonna fight it. But we’re trying to go through proper channels to give the CIF an opportunity to do the right thing. Having an attorney involved is our last resort, that means we tried everything.”

Puka Nacua is using organized team activities to hone his craft and prepare for his third NFL season.

But the Rams’ star receiver also recently took time to help others prepare to avoid potential health challenges.

Nacua last week returned from a trip to Samoa, where he and his mother joined medical professionals from Utah Valley University to provide testing, clinics and education about diabetes.

Nacua said his father, who died when Nacua was a youngster, experienced complications from the disease.

So the opportunity to travel with his mother to his maternal grandmother’s village was “kind of a full-circle moment” for his family, Nacua said Tuesday.

“To be able to go and improve the situation in the homeland was something sweet,” Nacua said after the team went through a workout.

Nacua, who missed the Rams’ first on-field workout because of the trip, appeared to be at full strength Tuesday, with no evidence of the knee injury he fought through last season.

Nacua is part of a remade Rams receiver corps that is expected to elevate the offense for a team regarded as a Super Bowl contender.

The Rams released veteran Cooper Kupp, who signed with the Seattle Seahawks, and replaced him with three-time All-Pro Davante Adams. They also re-signed Tutu Atwell to a one-year, $10-million contract. Second-year pro Jordan Whittington and rookie Konata Mumpfield also are competing for roles.

“It definitely is a little bit different,” Nacua said of Kupp’s absence from the receivers’ meeting room. “The spot he used to sit in, I think, it’s definitely occupied by somebody now, so everybody’s getting used to it.”

But Nacua said Adams, who was absent Tuesday, has come in and provided leadership.

“Somebody who’s played at a super high level his whole career — and the knowledge he has is something different from what we’re used to, having Coop in the system a long time,” Nacua said. “It’s been great to have him around and I feel like I’m learning something new every day.”

Nacua, 24, proved a quick study after the Rams selected him in the fifth round of the 2023 draft out of Brigham Young.

With Kupp sidelined at the start of the season because of injury, Nacua became quarterback Matthew Stafford’s primary target. Nacua enjoyed a record-setting season, catching 105 passes for 1,486 yards and six touchdowns. He was a finalist for the NFL offensive rookie of the year.

During training camp before last season, Nacua suffered a knee injury during a joint workout with the Chargers. He then aggravated the issue in the opener against the Detroit Lions, and was sidelined for five games. He still caught 79 passes for 990 yards and three touchdowns for a Rams team that finished with a 10-7 record and advanced to the divisional round of the NFC playoffs before losing to the eventual Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles.

Offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur said Nacua was “continuing to work on his craft,” during organized team activities.

“He’s naturally just a leader,” LaFleur said. “Just the way he goes about it.”

In a few weeks, Nacua will play a prominent role for the Rams when they travel to Maui for a minicamp that will conclude voluntary offseason workouts. Nacua, who also is of Hawaiian descent, is expected to be warmly embraced by the locals during some activities that will be open to the public.

“I’m excited,” he said. “I can’t wait for everybody to come out there and have some shaved ice. I’m sure they’ll be waiting for us.”

Etc.

The Rams have four coaches working with them during organized team activities as part of the NFL’s Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching fellowship program. The coaches are Taylor Embree (tight ends), Chris Marve (defensive backs), Va’a Niumatalolo (outside linebackers) and Greg Stewart (offensive line).

British canoeist Kurts Adams Rozentals has been blocked from Olympic training due to his OnlyFans account.

Back in April, the 22-year-old athlete’s professional canoeing dreams were cut short when Paddle UK banned him from their World Class Programme, citing “allegations” related to his social media.

The UK sports lottery-funded programme aims to help athletes train for major sporting events, such as the Olympics.

While Paddle UK has refrained from sharing additional details about the allegations and subsequent investigation, the governing body told BBC Sport that Rozentals’ ban “is not disciplinary action” but a “neutral act designed to protect all parties… safeguard other athletes, staff and volunteers.”

In a separate interview with the aforementioned news outlet, the young athlete theorised that the group’s decision stemmed from him having an OnlyFans account, which he created to help raise funds for his Olympic dreams.

“I have been posting videos (on Instagram) that are consciously made to be edgy in order to drive conversions to my “spicy content page” (on OnlyFans),” he explained.

Since starting his OnlyFans in January, Rozentals has earned over £100,000.

For context, athletes participating in Paddle UK’s programme are given a £16,000 annual grant, an amount the young talent says is not enough to train full-time.

“When you have to cover rent, travel, food… and most athletes who train full-time are all living in London. They’re very fortunate to have parent backing – I wasn’t,” he explained to the BBC.

“I never had the ability to move to London because of financial struggles so I was doing the travel from the East Midlands, where I live, to London, back-and-forth, back-and-forth.”

Towards the end of his interview, Rozentals revealed whether he would stop posting on OnlyFans if it meant keeping his spot in the programme.

“This is the hardest decision that I ever faced in my life. I came to the realisation about why I started doing this last winter after years of struggle, years of living on the edge, my mum working 90 hours a week, having bailiffs at the door,” he said.

“It’s a tough decision, but unless something changes in the way athletes are paid, I don’t see a way of working with Paddle UK.”

Rozentals recent interview comes a month after he initially opened up about the situation in a heartwrenching post on Instagram.

“I might lose my sports career with this post. But I couldn’t stay silent. For the last 15+ years, my life has revolved around one thing: canoe slalom. The sport I live and breathe. And it wasn’t just me. My family sacrificed everything so I could keep chasing the ultimate dream at racing at the Olympics,” he wrote.

“After my mum sacrificed everything… working 100+ hours a week, putting her needs to one side, I wanted to have a better life, not just for her but also for me. I was sick of worrying how to pay rent; I was sick of being on the verge of homelessness. I did whatever it took to never be in that position. Was it unconventional? Sure. I’m not perfect.

“But to ban me from racing? To ban me from speaking to my teammates like I’m some criminal? That’s fu**ing insane. I’m blessed to have a platform now. But this isn’t just about me anymore. I’m speaking up for every person who’s been pushed aside for not fitting into someone’s box. I’m speaking for everyone punished for not sucking up to the system.

As of writing, Paddle UK’s investigation into the aforementioned allegations is ongoing and being conducted by the independent investigation service Sport Integrity.

Jury found that the BBC had not acted in good faith and awarded Adams 100,000 euros ($113,000) in damages.

Former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has won a libel case against the BBC over a report alleging he sanctioned the killing of an informant in the Irish republican movement.

A jury at Ireland’s High Court on Friday found that the BBC had not acted in good faith and in a “fair and reasonable” way and awarded Adams 100,000 euros ($113,000) in damages.

Adams brought the lawsuit over a claim in a 2016 documentary and online article that he sanctioned the killing of Denis Donaldson, a long-serving Sinn Fein official who acknowledged in 2005 that he had worked for British intelligence. He was shot dead at his cottage in rural Ireland four months later.

The BBC “Spotlight” investigation included an anonymous allegation that the murder was sanctioned by the political and military leadership of the Irish Republican Army and that Adams gave “the final say”.

Adams denies any involvement.

Speaking outside court, Adams, 76, said the case was “about putting manners on the British Broadcasting Corporation”. His solicitors said Adams was “very pleased with this resounding verdict”.

Adams, 76, is one of the most influential figures of Northern Ireland’s decades of conflict, and its peace process. He led Sinn Fein, the party linked to the IRA, between 1983 and 2018. He has always denied being an IRA member, but former colleagues have said he was one of its leaders.

The BBC argued that it acted in “good faith”, that its programme was “fair and reasonable” and in the public interest, and that the allegation made in the documentary was supported by five other sources.

Speaking outside Dublin High Court alongside Spotlight reporter Jennifer O’Leary, BBC Northern Ireland director Adam Smyth told reporters they were disappointed with the verdict.

“We believe we supplied extensive evidence to the court of the careful editorial process and journalistic diligence applied to this programme and accompanying online article,” Smyth said.

“Moreover, it was accepted by the court, and conceded by Gerry Adams’ legal team, that the Spotlight broadcast and publication were of the highest public interest.”

Adams brought the case in Dublin as the Spotlight programme could be watched in Ireland, where it was seen by about 16,000 people.

An online article also had about 700 hits in Ireland during a 14-month period after its publication in September 2016.