The Bookshop Podcast
The Bookshop Podcast
Bookworm Phoenix: Lucy Yu, Owner Yu & Me Books
In this episode, I chat with Lucy Yu, founder and owner of Yu & Me Books. Trained as a chemical engineer, her life took an unexpected turn during the pandemic when grief from losing a close friend led to deep reflection about her purpose. "I'm here on earth to do art and foster love," she realized, and from this epiphany, You and Me Books was born—the first female Asian American-owned bookstore in New York City's historic Manhattan Chinatown.
Yu's vision of creating a genuine community space resonated deeply in a time when people were starved for connection. The bookstore became more than just a place to buy books—it transformed into a sanctuary where diverse voices are celebrated and where customers feel so at home they comfortably take naps in the chairs.
The journey hasn't been without heartbreak. In July 2023, a devastating fire ravaged the bookstore, forcing Yu to watch helplessly as her dream literally went up in smoke. But what followed was nothing short of miraculous. A GoFundMe campaign raised over $360,000 from 6,000 individual donors, fellow bookstore owners offered their spaces, and community members rallied with practical and emotional support. This outpouring of love affirmed Yu's belief that "chasing love and art will never let you down."
You and Me Books stands today as a testament to resilience, the power of community, and the vital role that independent bookstores play as third spaces where people can gather, connect, and belong. Lucy's story reminds us that books aren't just products—they're vessels for connection that show us we're never alone in our experiences.
Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder, Gabor Maté
Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex Ptsd with Internal Family Systems, Frank Anderson
Asymmetry, A Novel, Lisa Halliday
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter
Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America’s Civil Rights Revolution, Peniel E. Joseph
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a bibliophile. Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast. Each week, I present interviews with authors, independent bookshop owners and booksellers from around the globe and publishing professionals. To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to episode 301. You and Me Books is the first female Asian American-owned bookstore in New York City, located in historical Manhattan Chinatown. Owner Lucy Yu's focus is on the strong, diverse voices of her community, with a highlight on immigrant stories. Her carefully curated books and upcoming offerings of beer, wine and coffee cultivate a safe community space to sip, read and foster some amazing conversations. Hi, lucy, and welcome to the show. Hi, mandy, how are you? I'm good. How are you?
Speaker 2:I am rather exhausted. Yeah, I think that's pretty on the nose and I just got done with. May is AAPI month and we always joke. Every Asian business owner is so exhausted because it's a month that you're supposed to celebrate your heritage. But what happens in, like you know, capitalism framework is like we're working overtime and we're so tired and it's our busiest month and then we're like crawling to the end of it and then by the time June comes around, we're like, oh my god, we can't even celebrate pride because we're so tired. The gay Asians are tired.
Speaker 1:You know, I've never thought about that before, but you're absolutely right, you must be exhausted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because it's like you know we're, it does help our business and it brings a lot of business in. But I, you know, it's like I'm Asian 12 months. We could, we could spread it out a little bit.
Speaker 1:Oh, dear. Well, I can already tell we're gonna have a fun chat today. Thank you so much for being here, dear. Well, I can already tell we're going to have a fun chat today. Thank you so much for being here, lucy. Thank you for having me here. I'm excited to chat. When I was looking over your bio and then the history of the bookshop, I thought maybe we want to start a couple of years ago and move on through that and then go backwards. But I decided no, we'll get to that, but what we'll do is start by learning about you, because you trained as a chemical engineer and worked as a supply chain manager for a food company before opening you and me books. So what led you to consider a career change and why did you choose to open a bookshop?
Speaker 2:I think I'm someone that is always open to change and I think a linear career path was never something that was in the works for me. But in particular, I think, going through the grief of the pandemic, especially when grief was so widespread, I was dealing with my own loss. I'd lost one of my best friends. I was just managing understanding where my priorities in how I wanted to live each day really lay. I think that when you experience that much grief, you really try to understand, like what are the things that I love the most and what are the things that are most important to me. And I realized, like I'm here on earth to, you know, do art and foster love. And I couldn't really think of anything else that was driving me forward. And I mean, especially during that time, like I felt like I needed to focus on something so desperately to manage the grief. The grief was so overwhelming that I the only thing that kind of got me through was focusing on on the love and art that I poured into the bookstore.
Speaker 1:And why did you decide to pour all your creativity into a bookshop rather than any other kind of creative business?
Speaker 2:I am a really creative person and I do a lot of art on the side, but I cannot have that be my full-time job.
Speaker 2:I think that for me personally it removes a little bit of the enjoyability out of it, and so I need a lot of structure and I need to be building towards something that's separate from the free-flowing creativity that happens outside of work, separate from the free flowing creativity that happens outside of work, and I I love, I love amplifying people's art, like as as an artist, I'm a big consumer of art and I love being immersed in art.
Speaker 2:And one thing that really got me through the pandemic was reading. You know, 100 books a year to just part of it was like a little bit of dissociation, you know a little bit of escapism, and part of it was just a desire to be breathing in life again, and breathing in lives so different than mine and so similar to mine. And you know, in COVID our lives were so small and so separated, and so where could I go but dive into the world in books and so that together I think I'm, as an engineer, I'm really intellectually stimulated with building things and pushing kind of the envelope on innovation and what that looks like for humanity and what I want to see in the future of like my own life and the humanity that I dream of and that is like a focus on community. I was desperate and I was hungry for deep human connection and I felt if I could immerse myself in art and feel safe in that place to explore my own life, explore my own desires, like I can kind of foster that with other people as well.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you, that time was just so difficult for all of us. Can you tell me a little bit about the kind of art you do? What medium do you work in, or mediums?
Speaker 2:kind of art you do. What medium do you work in? Or mediums, I'm kind of I just do whatever comes to mind. I just finished a poetry collection and I do a lot of visual art. I used to be a painter and I was an art teacher many, many years ago, but I've kind of explored recently a lot of markers and I'm really wanting to get closer to the page that I'm working on. I think the hands-on approach is just allowing a little bit more presence in my body. So a little mix of everything.
Speaker 1:There's something that you said I don't want my creativity to be my job. I have a son that says the same thing, and I know a lot of friends who've said the same. Lucy, looking back, how did your first year of business compared to what you envisioned in your original business proposal, whether in terms of growth challenges or community reception?
Speaker 2:I really tried to not have any expectation past the first four months of business because I was just really unsure if the business was going to be profitable at all. I was opening a bookstore in the middle of a pandemic in this digital age. The metrics didn't bode well for my predicted success. So I really was like I have a four-month runway to try to make this work and I am open to whatever the universe throws at me and I will try to remain adaptable. So I think the biggest surprise was the reception of it. I really didn't expect more than 10 people to come in a day and I didn't expect to sell more than 12 books a day, which was my break-even point, and I just was shocked.
Speaker 2:I think immediately people were drawn to my vision of this community bookstore that I hadn't even fully formed myself and I think that really spoke to the desperation of desiring connection with people and desiring in-person connection with people when we were so deprived of that. Like I think when we're severed from that connection, we live in this kind of ambiguous state where we're not as close to our humanity as our actual souls really need to be, and I think everyone started kind of attaching their own vision to what they ideally thought about community. So it's in the same way that, like when you produce an artwork or you finish a book and it's out in the world and it's no longer yours, it's, you know, the interpretation of everyone else's perception of this art and you had your original intention for it. But I think, as someone who created this bookstore, I'm so grateful that other people have kind of taken it for themselves and decided, like this is my third space in this way and that's really surprised me, but surprised me in a really wonderful way.
Speaker 1:And that leads into my next question. Beautifully, because on your website you talk about the lack of representation in the literary space and your desire to create a welcoming space where people feel heard. Can you expand on this thought, especially what you've observed in terms of representation and how your bookstore addresses that?
Speaker 2:I think the word representation has been reduced a bit over time and I think a lot of the publishing world and also just our capitalistic kind of mindset in America right now, thinking about representation becomes a very narrow path of what is the most convenient for a general audience for representation to be.
Speaker 2:Representation has become more generalized, I think, from a like how to make money standpoint or what's our bottom line standpoint, and my desire for representation is the truest sense of the word in that you are a person that can do whatever you want with the art that you make.
Speaker 2:And I think a lot of Asian Americans, people of color, writers of color, children of immigrants that are working within this creative space, they become forced to be educators of their experience instead of just being someone that can be an artist and having the free-flowing flexibility of that. I think I experienced that because I'm Asian American and I opened a store and it was immediately labeled as an Asian American bookstore, which is not true. It's a bookstore and I'm Asian American and I think that that kind of lends itself to like the reduction of what representation has done to the kind of audience that art can reach, and so my goal is to be a really loud advocate for these amazing artists and authors that are coming to just share their art and sharing who they are. And it may not fit into a generalized mold or any kind of preconceived notions of what someone expects, of whatever someone expects, but I think that is the ultimate goal of representation is to kind of shatter these boundaries of outside perception.
Speaker 1:I enjoy reading translated books, as I've said on the show many times.
Speaker 2:Me as well. I love translated lit.
Speaker 1:I think an issue that rose to the surface during the pandemic was that there are many spaces in publishing that were disregarded, and one was the lack of translated books, and it's one of the reasons why I love small and medium presses, because they have the courage to take a chance on a different kind of book, and this is something that I really admire. Something else you raised as well that I'd like to talk about I've lived in Australia, england and in the US, and I've been lucky enough to travel quite a bit, and I'm constantly discouraged about how the American administration and much of our leadership refuse to see the importance of supporting creative people. It just breaks my heart and, of course, with the current administration here in America, grants are incredibly hard to get now. Yeah right, it's truly heartbreaking.
Speaker 2:It's really painful, I think. I mean you really nailed it and it's been really difficult to see this country move further and further away from that. I think the United States is such a young country and they haven't experienced quite the tension of full loss, uphold that idea of exceptionalism. That kind of feeds on what capitalism productivity is prioritized right now versus the flourishing creativity and arts in which feeds into that questioning of society and feeds into a larger sense of self when that doesn't really help capitalism. So I think it's the whole structure of our country that is not open minded to just kind of yeah, I mean larger representation, which kind of feeds back to your previous question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, here we are taking money away from schools and the arts. We are going to be a nation of followers, not leaders and problem solvers, because that's what the arts do they inspire empathy and encourage us to think out of the box. I believe what we need right now are thinkers and dreamers, people who have ideas that they're not scared to try, and we need people with money to support these idea, creative thinkers to help them succeed. Oh, my goodness, I feel like I'm ranting because I could go on about that subject for hours. Same same. Okay. Now, in the summer of 2023, there was a fire in the bookshop. Take us back to when you first realized the bookshop was on fire and later to the extent of the damage.
Speaker 2:I was working there that day. I was working at the store on July 4th of 2023 and smoke started coming in, but I thought it was fireworks and one of the customers had asked, like are we safe? And I was like, I think so. I think it's just fireworks. And then one of my neighbors from upstairs came down and she was the one that notified me that there was a fire happening upstairs and that we needed to evacuate. And I had to just stand across the street and watch it happen and not do anything.
Speaker 2:And as soon as I could, I went back in probably too soon, and it really it honestly messed with my lungs a lot. It was not the safest thing to do, but I just it's hard when you see everything that you built just destroyed in a moment. I just wanted to see what had happened and I tried to save as many books as I could and I had a lot of friends that were there that were planning on just hanging out with me at the store that day and immediately they were like they got tarps, they got bags and they just we worked together to save, I think, like about a couple, a couple hundred, a couple thousand books. I'm not even sure of the number, but we saved as many books as we could and it just it was. It was just so painful and the extent of the damage.
Speaker 2:I remember the firefighting crew. They were like I think it'll take about a year to fix and I'm such an overachiever try hard that I was like on my watch. It's going to take shorter, but that comes with its own consequences. I think when you're managing grief and you immediately go into such intense action, you have to suppress so much emotion in which I'm kind of grappling with at this moment. I am having the delayed reaction of that and and I have needed to rely on my community again for that emotional support and for me being in a state of shaky mental health, like I've had to be honest with that and be vulnerable and open with that as a business owner, which is something that's it's it's just really difficult to be vulnerable and I just I felt like being myself and being honest with where I was was what I encourage other people to do, and the only way that I could lead by that is through example. But it's so much harder to do it yourself and so much easier to encourage it.
Speaker 1:I think it's really difficult to ask for help and in some ways it's especially difficult for women, right? I mean, I don't want to sound old fashioned in that, but I think for many women it is really difficult to accept help and to be vulnerable. I feel really emotional when I talk about this, so I think it must trigger me a little. You know, looking back at what you've been through, lucy, I'm just so proud of you and it's not like I know you or anything, but what you've done is incredible the rebuilding, keeping your community together. But getting back to what you went through, I'm so surprised that the firemen let you into the building as early as they did.
Speaker 2:I am surprised too, honestly, and I really I've been thinking a lot about what you just said about how it's so hard for me to accept help and ask for help and even when people are willing to give it, I don't think I'm deserving. And so much of that comes with the hard work of understanding my own self-value, understanding and having a better sense of self, and that means accessing the very ups and downs of pulling the grief that I've been trying to suppress and the inconvenience of feeling uncomfortable in that grief. So that is, it's all related but it's really difficult to go through and that is kind of my priority right now and it's it's hard to also run a business while also prioritizing your mental health, but that was something I always struggled with working in a corporate environment, working as an engineer working a lot of the time as the only female engineer and with my own business.
Speaker 2:I want to figure out a way in which we can prioritize that and me prioritize that and not have all of that be put on my team to work extra. It's just we have to figure out a balance of the ecosystem, which is a new equation every time I look at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm thrilled you're writing poetry. It's a condensed version of journaling and or part of journaling, and I'm sure it's helping you get through everything. I'm curious was there ever a moment that you consider just closing the door and walking away from your business? I would love to know what kept you motivated and was there a turning point?
Speaker 2:I think for any small business owner, that thought comes up. There was never a moment during the fire, particularly where I wanted to quit. I think that I'm someone who has such strong counter will sometimes that if there's pressure or there's something destroying something I really believe in, like that counter will will take over everything, including my mental and physical health. But you know, there are days when I dream of like I'd love to not be the steerer of the ship. You know, I'd love to be someone who isn't solely responsible for every single aspect of my life. I'm responsible for my professional aspect, my personal aspect, and there's so much freedom in that, but there's also so much responsibility. I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I miss someone just telling me what to do for the day and being like, hey, at 5 PM I get to log off and watch a TV show and um, but I ultimately like I lived that life and I tried it out and there is a bit of ease. But that loss of agency was so depraving for my soul that I, um, I had to choose this path and I keep reminding myself that, um, I never really wanted to be a leader. I never thought I was going to be a good leader, but I am someone who has always strived to go to the beat of my own drum with community and other people, and so I think that is the path that I've been on and I don't have any regrets about it. I think it's just managing the very true feelings of always thinking of alternatives, and but I think that's just what we're always going to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. Tell us about the GoFundMe campaign you launched and the incredible response you received from the community.
Speaker 2:I launched two GoFundMe campaigns. The first one was to start the business. So I put $40,000 of my own savings into the business. So I put forty thousand dollars of my own savings into the business and I had needed some extra support, which was really scary to ask for. But I reached, I think, fifteen thousand dollars on my first gofundme campaign, which really allowed me the full amount of money to open up the business.
Speaker 2:And, um, after the fire, like you, it was so difficult for me to ask for help. I felt like, even though it wasn't my fault, obviously, it just felt like I was responsible, like I was the one that wanted to start this and then now it's ruined and I feel bad that I have to now. It was just a lot of that self-doubt and I'm so lucky to be surrounded by some of the most incredible people and friends and they really encouraged me to ask for help and I think within a day or two we raised over $300,000. Wow, that's fantastic campaign. I think it was over $360,000, over 6,000 individual donors.
Speaker 2:I obviously don't know 6,000 people, so so many of these people I don't even know and, honestly, it makes me speechless to think about it and I do have moments of self-doubt and I have moments where I'm like you know, what am I doing and is what I'm doing really important? And then I go back to that GoFundMe and I read these comments of people that believe in this small bookstore that I believed in and I dreamed up out of pure love for art and community, and it kind of brings me back and it keeps me grounded in knowing that chasing love and art will never let you down. And I'm just yeah, I really like I've never seen anything like that. I don't think I think I've filled such a range of human emotions during the last, you know, four years and it's yeah, I'm just astounded by it and just thank you to everyone that's supported the store.
Speaker 1:I think what we have to remember is that people want the indie bookshops and need them in their communities and it's just an honor for them to help you, just as you feel honored to give them and to present to them your indie bookshop, the way you create your store. They feel that back to you again. Now you receive support from other indie bookshops, authors and musicians. Can you share some of the moments and events the creative community organized for you?
Speaker 2:There are so many examples of that from me just literally crying outside of the store on the day of the fire and 10 people showing up giving me whiskey, giving me chicken wings and going to their apartment to get some water, getting me clean clothes. Like it was so immediate for people to help and I've just never experienced that like in my life and it's it's honestly that changes you as a person. And after the fire, another indie bookstore in the city.
Speaker 1:Books are magic oh, oh, that's Emma Straub. She's been on the show, isn't she lovely?
Speaker 2:Emma, oh my God, sweet Emma, oh my gosh. So she texted me immediately. She gave me keys to her bookstore and she was like, use this for a space whenever you need. This is like our shared space for the time that you need it. And I just like that is someone with such a big heart and care for people around you.
Speaker 2:And other stores, like Golden Diner in the same neighborhood, which I think is like one of the most popular restaurants in the city, reach out immediately because they had a fire. And, um, the owner, sam, he took me out to whiskey sour and he was like, let's just talk it through and let's talk through everything that you're feeling right now and let's see how I can help. And that's, I think, as someone I mean I don't have immediate family and like I, as someone who experiences something like that, like in a chosen family structure um, especially growing up with a family that doesn't support that it's just, it's completely, it's opened my heart even more and like I think they have allowed for boundless love to exude through me because they show that to me. So it's just, it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:It just warmed my heart reading all of the articles about the help you received and the support given to you throughout the rebuilding by your community. How do you feel now, you and Me? Books is settled back on Mulberry Street.
Speaker 2:I am so happy to be back home. I think that there's. You know, the fire happened, oh my God, it wasn't until you said 2023. That was like it's almost two years ago, and every July is very difficult for me. Um, july 2nd is the anniversary of the passing of one of my best friends that passed away during 2020, and July 4th is the anniversary of the fire, and my body knows before my brain knows.
Speaker 2:I think, heading towards that time, I just feel a lot of difficulty and um, but that has gotten, it's gotten easier over the years, just because I've allowed myself to kind of melt into the arms of my friends and community and, um, it's, it's so.
Speaker 2:It's just blown my mind that the willpower of me and everyone around us to feed into love, feed into art and feed into community has created even a wider safety net for everyone. I think that I go into the store and I'm like people really feel at home here and I can tell because people are taking naps in the chairs and I just like I love that and I think that that's beautiful to be able to go to a public space and be like I feel so comfortable that I'm going to pass out on this chair right now. I never thought that would be possible. It's a lot of emotion. It's so much joy, so much love, so much grief, and I think I used to think it was inconvenient to feel all of those things within 24 hours, but I'm riding the very human tumultuous waves of feeling everything in a day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're right. I totally agree with you when you say your body knows a certain date is coming up before your brain. That's happened to me so many times and I think that it just is a reminder that we are more than just this. There is so much more to humanity than that to our bodies. You know what are you currently reading and why did you choose that book?
Speaker 2:I am definitely investigating some trauma right now. I am I just finished actually this morning Scattered Minds by Gabor Mate and I was recently diagnosed with ADHD I think to my friends, shocking to no one but it's really, I think, part of my journey of self-understanding and creating a better sense of self which will make me a better leader. I really do believe that is investigating some of these things that I've been holding my whole life, that now I have a name to, and I've really enjoyed understanding the interconnectedness of ADHD and your upbringing and what attention deficit really means for attunement deficit for emotions, and how that leads into addiction, either workaholism, substance abuse, but also how that there's so much room for recreating or creating new brain paths that allow for security and secure relationships and secure relationships with self, and all of that gives me a lot of hope, I think for me when I'm investigating my trauma I need a lot of context and if I have that context I'm able to unpack everything step by step and that helps with the kind of scattering of the brain that I usually operate in and I can actually kind of bring it out into like a couple of neat strings that I can really see. But what that also means is that I have to take the time to grieve as well. So I've been reading that.
Speaker 2:I'm also reading Transcending Trauma by Frank G Anderson. I'm deep, I'm really in it. I'm really in it. But I also finished a really wonderful poetry collection called Asymmetry as well. So I'm just, I'm digging, I'm spelunking in the noggin yeah it sounds like it.
Speaker 1:Have you had a chance to read Max Porter's? Grief is a Thing with Feathers.
Speaker 2:I have it on my list. I haven't read it yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's beautiful. I've shared it with many people and they've all said how much they gained from reading it. Isn't it extraordinary that, no matter what we're going through emotionally in our life, we can find a book to read about it?
Speaker 2:That's what we do, right? I think that that's literally what I've dedicated my life to. I think there was a James Baldwin quote where I'm going to butcher it. But it's like you think you're alone and then you start reading. That is so beautiful and you just realize the depth of human souls that have always existed. And of course, there's someone in the existence of the world that has felt what you have felt. And I think, to prevent the pandemic of self-isolation, reading can really open our eyes up to worlds of connection.
Speaker 1:I love that you mentioned James Baldwin because, as you can see by this book, oh my god, I love all the marked up pages too.
Speaker 1:I know. Thank God for sticky notes. Anyway, I'm rereading this book for an in-person event with Peniel E Joseph on August 14th, and James Baldwin features in this book. It's just so beautiful. It's called Freedom Season yes, freedom Season, how 1963 transformed America's civil rights revolution, by Dr Peniel E Joseph. It is absolutely remarkable. Plus, one of the main characters I think I could call him a character in a nonfiction book is James Baldwin, and it's full of his quotes, his humanity, oh, it's just beautiful.
Speaker 2:He's just such a tender, and true writer and artist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a true creative Lucy. It's been fabulous chatting with you. You're a gem. Once again, I'm really proud of you for getting through what you've gone through the fire, getting back on your feet again and bringing what you love into the community. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, mandy. This really made my day talking to you, and, um, just it's just been such a joy to be in conversation with you, and if you find yourself in chinatown, please stop by for a drink you've been listening to my conversation with lucy you, the founder and owner of you and me books.
Speaker 1:To help the show reach more people, please share episodes with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. To find out more about the Bookshop Podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on Instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop Podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop Podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson Beverlyeverly, theme music provided by Brian Beverly, and my executive assistant and graphic designer is Adrian Otterhan. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time. Thank, you.