After a devastating 2023 fire, the community helped rebuild Yu & Me Books. Now Lucy Yu is giving that support back across New York City.
On the afternoon of July 4, 2023, Lucy Yu was working inside Yu & Me Books, her shop on Mulberry Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown, when she smelled smoke. She assumed it was fireworks, until a neighbor ran in through the haze to warn her.
The blaze began in an apartment upstairs. Smoke and water poured into the store below, ruining Yu’s hand-built furniture and café. She and a friend could save little of the roughly 2,000 books inside. The fire took the life of Frank Yee, 76, a longtime member of the neighborhood and a decorated Vietnam War veteran.
Three years later, the store is thriving, a documentary about its recovery is on the festival circuit, and Yu is using her shop to help steady other corners of the city.
Building the Bookstore She Always Wanted
Yu grew up in West Los Angeles, an only child raised by her mother, and books filled the loneliness of those years. She trained as a chemical engineer and was working as a supply chain manager for a food company. In January 2021, she hit a wall when she was working 80-hour weeks while still grieving a good friend who had died the year before. She took her whole year’s vacation at once and spent it reading two books a day.
That loss changed how she thought about time. She decided to build the life she wanted, because she couldn’t know how long she had. She started by Googling how to run a bookstore, then treated the idea like a science experiment. She began with a hypothesis and worked through the variables, from the mix of new and used books to the cost of a storefront.
The result was a store where immigrant stories and writers of color fill every shelf, not one display or one heritage month. Yu crowdfunded about $18,000 to lease a former funeral supply store. She kept the old sign, with its Chinese characters, on the door as a tribute. The initials Y.M. are her mother’s, a nod to how their stories are intertwined. Yu figured she needed to sell 12 books a day to break even. She was soon selling more than a hundred and turned a profit within four months, growing her team of staff to 10.
The store opened in December 2021, amid a surge in anti-Asian violence. It quickly became a place for author readings and for gatherings to remember those lost to that violence. Today, the store describes itself as New York City’s first queer Asian American bookstore. It is also widely known as the city’s first Asian American woman-owned bookstore.
When the City Showed Up
Two days after the fire, Yu launched a GoFundMe to cover staff wages, damaged inventory, insurance deductibles, and pop-ups while the store closed for repairs. Insurance money wouldn’t arrive for at least eight months, and she wanted to make sure her team got paid. The goal was $150,000, and donors including Simu Liu, Celeste Ng, and Min Jin Lee quickly pushed it past that amount. More than $230,000 was raised within a day, and the campaign closed at $369,555, with more than 6,000 people donating.
Neighbors brought practical help. Golden Diner, a Chinatown restaurant that had survived its own fire in 2021, helped Yu build a realistic timeline for rebuilding and dealing with insurance. The nonprofit Welcome to Chinatown stored her undamaged stock, and The Market Line gave the store a temporary space to keep revenue coming in. Yu & Me operated from The Market Line from September to December.
Other booksellers pitched in too. Archestratus Books held a bake sale, Astoria Bookshop donated from its own sales, Books Are Magic raised funds and lent its space, and Book Club Bar hosted Yu & Me’s book clubs. Yu has said she was too scared to ask for help, but many people didn’t wait for her to ask.
Back Home in Seven Months
Yu had predicted their repairs would take a year. The store reopened after seven months, on January 28, 2024, with a remodeled basement holding more books and seating. A bulky countertop was gone, replaced by open space and extra seats. On reopening day, the line of neighbors, authors, and friends ran out onto the sidewalk.
Learning to Ask for Help
A month after the fire, Yu described the shop as more than a business. “My whole soul is in it,” she said, and she acknowledged that the grief might stay with her for a while.
Leaning on others didn’t come naturally; Yu was nervous even about posting a GoFundMe. That tension is at the center of Yu & Me, a documentary directed by Esther Chan and Claudine Cho. It follows a fiercely independent owner who must do what she was raised not to do: ask for help, and who comes to see community as essential to survival.
The project began as a short profile for OOF Stories, the filmmakers’ series about AAPI creators. The fire struck shortly after filming wrapped. With Yu’s blessing, the crew kept filming, spending two years following the store from before the fire through its reopening. The film screened at the 2026 Mountainfilm Festival and screened at the Asian American International Film Festival in August. Next, it heads to Brooklyn’s Bushwick Film Festival, which runs October 7–11.
Shelves Built for Surprise
Yu’s buying philosophy fits in one line: “I want a story to surprise someone.” Her favorites range from Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko to Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart and Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know. She loves linking one book to the next, steering readers from Ava Chin’s Mott Street toward Patrick Radden Keefe’s The Snakehead. After the fire, her staff pick was William Bridges’ Transitions, a guide to navigating life’s upheavals.
Three Fundraisers, One Community
Yu & Me runs several fundraisers each year, a practice Yu considers an essential part of the business model. This season, three causes are drawing support.
The first is Village Works, the St. Mark’s Place bookstore and gallery that Joseph Sheridan opened in 2021 to celebrate NYC culture. After cancer treatments left Sheridan in a three-week coma this spring, he began handing the store over to his junior partners. His GoFundMe covers back rent and fills the gaps while he steps back, and Lucy Yu is among its donors.
The second is Design Your Future NYC at New Design High School, which hosts many of Yu & Me’s larger author events. Fifteen percent of pre-orders for Min Jin Lee’s American Hagwon go to the program.
The third brings the story to Queens. New Life Community Development Corporation runs a food pantry, a health center, and wellness programs for low-income residents of Elmhurst and Corona. On December 9, Yu will host An Evening with Min Jin Lee in Elmhurst, where Lee grew up after moving from Seoul at age seven. Tickets include a signed copy of American Hagwon, out September 29, and a donation to New Life.
Part of a Bigger Chapter
The American Booksellers Association reports that 605 independent bookstores opened in the U.S. in 2025, the fifth straight year in which more than 200 opened. Only 65 closed, and membership grew 19% in 2025. Membership is also up 151% over the past six years.
Yu has her own theory of how that kind of community grows. She compares it to the Fibonacci sequence: you connect with one person, then another, and each of them connects with someone new. That is the Yu & Me model: a bookstore carried through its worst year by thousands of people, now passing that support along.
Plan Your Visit
Yu & Me Books is at 44 Mulberry St., New York, NY 10013, facing Columbus Park in the heart of Chinatown. The shop is open from 11 AM to 7 PM Monday through Wednesday and Sunday, and from 11 AM to 11 PM Thursday through Saturday. You can reach the store at (646) 559-1165or find upcoming events at yuandmebooks.com.
When you go, browse slowly, leave with a book you never knew existed, and consider giving to the causes the store champions.
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Adam Ryan
Adam is a distinguished content writer, bookworm, and full-time adventurer with a constant craving for coffee. When he's not working, he loves exploring remote corners of the world, immersing himself in different cultures, and writing about his experiences.
