Yu & Me (and a Bookstore Dream)
Whew, what a story. Retail is such a tough business; bookstores among the hardest of the bunch. (Any booksellers following here can attest, I’m sure.) Marketing folks are no dummies: They know that ensconcing their product with verbiage that connotes “community” or “authenticity” is the way to go. My son recently bought a pack of Italian ices, and the slogan is “Treat your REAL self.” Similarly, Oatly oat milk uses one whole side of a carton to promote its mission to “build a better society for people.” Well, ok! But at their finest, bookstores truly *are* the real deal, no fancy marketing required.
This NYT piece — “The 7 Grueling Months to Reclaim the Bookstores Dream a Fire Stole” — completely epitomizes how a bookstore can have a symbiotic relationship with its local community. Yu & Me was — and, spoiler alert, still is — a bookstore in Manhattan’s Chinatown, opened by Lucy Yu in the wake of a particularly fraught era of anti-Asian attacks in 2021. According to the piece, “It quickly became a literary hub that hosted first-time authors and held weekend bar nights, when bibliophiles sipped hard seltzers and wine. The store was profitable within four months.” [!!!]
And then on July 4 of last year, the building that housed Yu & Me caught on fire, destroying the store. But not the “spirit” of the store, despite Yu feeling obviously distraught by the destruction of her dream. It was her community, in addition to her own resourcefulness, that allowed her to rebuild — albeit with several bumps in the road including delayed book shipments and a temporary space on the lower level of a food hall that wasn’t conducive to actually, you know, selling books. But a month after the re-opening in the old space in January of this year, revenue was 50 percent more than pre-fire. Yu & Me continues to have a loyal fan (and consumer) base, including Pachinko author Min Jin Lee.
Honestly, this was just a really joyful article to read despite setback after setback for Yu because it was also about how she rebuilt *herself* after such a traumatic experience, with the help of her community. Bookstores, at their best, do it right.
originally published on instagram