People told Lucy Yu it was a crazy time to open a bookstore in Chinatown. It was early 2021, and the pandemic had devastated the neighborhood, forcing dozens of stores and restaurants to close. The rise of anti-Asian hate crimes had shaken residents and local business owners.
But Ms. Yu believed that a bookstore was just what the neighborhood needed.
She raised around $20,000 on GoFundMe, enough to rent a narrow storefront — a former funeral supply store — on Mulberry Street in downtown Manhattan. A neighborhood grant gave her $2,000 for shelves and books. And in December, she opened Yu and Me Books, which specializes in titles by and about immigrants and people of color.
The store was profitable within four months, Ms. Yu said.
Yu and Me Books is one of more than 300 new independent bookstores that have sprouted across the United States in the past couple of years, in a surprising and welcome revival after an early pandemic slump. And as the number of stores has grown, the book selling business — traditionally overwhelmingly white — has also become much more diverse.
JasperTheHuman on July 12nd, 2022 at 07:15 UTC »
Because when I order books online they get tossed around and arrive damaged.
michaelyup on July 12nd, 2022 at 00:38 UTC »
I want to see bookstores thrive again. I spent so much time at the public library and mall bookstore (pre-internet days). Half-Price Books, all the resale bookstores, pure gold. I was so disappointed when I moved to a new town and found out they didn’t have a bookstore. The library was decent though.
SignificantHippo8193 on July 11st, 2022 at 23:56 UTC »
Regardless of people trying to ban books, many more others seek out knowledge. And not to just solidify their own mentalities or bias, but to expand their understanding. Fundamentally, reading is about learning how to think outside your established understanding of things in order to expand that understanding. You may not like the contents of a book and that is totally understandable, but understanding diverse ways of think through literature is a great way for one to expand their critical thinking, an understanding that bleeds into how one interacts with the world. The diversity of books and literature is what gives them power to shape people's thoughts, but more importantly how one uses that power to shape their own thoughts is where their true strength shines.