How grief, burnout and a Google search led to NYC’s Yu and Me Books

When Lucy Yu was 7 years old, she told her mom she wanted to retire and open a bookstore one day. She’d always loved reading and, as the only child raised primarily by her single mother who immigrated from China, turned to books as a source of comfort.

Now, at age 27, Yu is living that retirement dream as her full-time job. In December, she opened Yu and Me Books in Manhattan’s Chinatown, New York City’s first Asian American woman-owned bookstore that centers works from authors of color, immigrants and people from marginalized communities — a place Yu says she’s always wanted to see but never found until she created it herself.

“This was a pipe dream,” Yu tells CNBC Make It. “I didn’t realize the space that I wanted for myself was also wanted by other people. That means so much to me.”

Turning to books through grief and burnout

One night over wine, she fired up Google and began researching how to open a bookstore and putting ideas into a spreadsheet. “All of a sudden it was 2 a.m. and I had put together this outline” of a business plan, she says. In the following days and weeks, she chipped away at bringing it to life.

By May, she launched a GoFundMe crowdfunding page and raised nearly $16,000. She took those funds, along with her life savings, to rent out a space, cover overhead costs and build an inventory.

She opened Yu and Me Books in December 2021, a tribute to her mother’s initials “YM.”

Yu continued to work her day job until February, when she quit and began running the bookstore full-time. “I just took a shot and hoped it would turn out for the best,” she says, “and I’m really excited that I’m self-employed now. I never thought that would be an option for me.”

Yu and Me Books features stories by AAPI writers, immigrants, authors of color and members of marginalized communities.

Courtesy of subject

Her mother originally questioned why she’d quit her steady 9-to-5 to open a bookstore in the age of Amazon. But after the store officially opened, Yu says, her mother flew from California to New York, “and she stayed with me in the bookstore every day for three weeks, which was so wild, because Asian moms don’t do that,” Yu jokes.

“I think her perception of what the bookstore is and how much people were excited about it changed with her stay here,” Yu adds.

A place for community

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/17/how-grief-burnout-and-a-google-search-led-to-nycs-yu-and-me-books.html