Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll hear how a bookstore in Chinatown was brought back to life after a devastating fire. We’ll also meet the editor of a high school newspaper who became the subject of an article in the issue that came out last month.
Yu & Me Books was the first bookstore in Manhattan to be owned by an Asian American woman when it opened in December 2021. It was heavily damaged little more than 18 months later — on the Fourth of July last year — when fire destroyed an apartment upstairs in the same building in Chinatown.
By the time the fire trucks left, Yu was already thinking about what it would take to reopen the store, even though a thousand books had been ruined and she had lost $60,000 in inventory. My colleague Jordyn Holman followed Yu’s struggles after the fire. I asked Jordyn to explain how she came across the story and why she found it meaningful. Here’s what she said:
“My editor noticed Yu’s GoFundMe campaign and, knowing that I’m an avid book lover, suggested that I reach out to Lucy, as I came to call her.
“I cover the retail industry, which usually means writing about big companies that most people have heard of like Walmart and Macy’s. But retailing is also made up of millions of small businesses that dot our neighborhoods. I figured that following Lucy’s story would be a way to give readers insight into the mind-set of an entrepreneur who had been forced to rewrite her original business plan.
“In our first conversation, Lucy, a first-generation Chinese American who was then 28, told me that as a child she had dreamed of opening a bookstore. When she was growing up in Los Angeles, her mother would take her to Chinatown, where they could eat her mother’s favorite cuisine and speak Chinese. Lucy would also take art classes there. Her mother would wait in the car, in a CVS parking lot, and read — there were no bookstores for her to go.
“Lucy moved to New York in 2019 to work in supply-chain management. During the pandemic, like many of us, she started re-evaluating life and her goals — and revisited her childhood dream of a bookstore.
“Yu & Me became a community gathering spot. Authors gave talks, and Lucy teamed up with other businesses in the neighborhood like Bahn by Lauren, selling their Vietnamese American and French pastries in her bookstore. It was a positive development for Chinatown, which was reeling from a string of anti-Asian attacks.
“Lucy wouldn’t let the fire be the end of the store’s story. It’s not just a story about one really determined businesswoman, but also about a community that rallied behind her. She was able to welcome customers back to Yu & Me in late January, in time for Lunar New Year, reopening the shop in a little more than half the time fire officials had expected it to take.
“These days, on any given afternoon, Yu & Me is brimming with people browsing the books on the shelves and tables, sitting on the bar stools or chatting with friends in the nook. Lucy has been thinking about the ways she can expand her reach. She has been applying for grants. But for now she has Yu & Me Books, a dream no longer deferred.”
How a student editor handled an article about a subject she knew well
One of the top articles in the latest issue of What’s What, one of two student newspapers at Hunter College High School in Manhattan, was about students’ mental health. Another article looked at food trucks where students get their lunches.
Deep inside the 24-page newspaper was an article that a co-editor initially had doubts about. “I don’t think we should do this,” the co-editor, Sophie Gao, recalled saying. “It would be weird — like, a conflict of interest.”
The article was about her. And What’s What went ahead with it.
“There are three of us who are editors-in-chief,” Gao said. “One of the other editors-in-chief, she said, ‘Well, I think it’s a big deal — we should write about it.’” Gao assented.
The article said that Gao was a Top 40 finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, chosen from among 2,162 applicants from 712 high schools nationwide.
Her science project was about how a cancer drug behaves in the body and what happens in cellular pathways adjacent to the one where the drug inhibits cancer cells. She used fruit flies to model the effects of such a drug.
As an editor, Gao faced a question that sometimes vexes editors at big-name newspapers when they make news: How involved should they be once the reporter has done the interviews and handed in the article?
Gao said the article about her went through the normal editing channels, meaning that eventually it went to her. How much did she change?
“Not that much,” she said.
There was a quotation she did not touch, she said, even though her first reaction to seeing it in the article was “I could’ve said this better.”
Her decision to leave the quotation alone, she said, is the same approach that What’s What takes when quoting teachers. Teachers and administrators can review articles for factual inaccuracies. But “if you just want to take something out to make yourself sound smarter,” she said, “we discourage that.”
Gao said the other paper at Hunter, The Observer, did not write about her. “They write more, like, global news,” she said, adding that “we tend to write more about local news” and school events. What’s What’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, for example, focused on students’ connections — relatives in Israel or Gaza.
As a Regeneron finalist, she received a $40,000 scholarship. Hunter also received $4,000 in prize money.
As a student journalist, she said, one of the most memorable articles she worked on for What’s What involved an interview with Donna Shalala, the president of Hunter College in the 1980s and now the interim president of the New School.
The interview came about after Lisa Siegman, the director of Hunter College Campus Schools, met Shalala. As Siegman recounted the conversation, Shalala said that “one of the biggest dramas she had to deal with” as president of Hunter involved the high school and the rights of student newspapers.
“I said, ‘I’m sure the students would love to hear that story,” Siegman said. “She said, ‘Send them down.’”
“She was really cool,” Gao said, recalling that Shalala had served in the Peace Corps and had been the secretary of health and human services in the Clinton administration “She seemed like a person who had lived a lot of life.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Wiggly
Dear Diary:
I dropped off my well-worn boots at a shoe repair place near the office that I had found online and that had good reviews.
Expecting a street-side shoeshine parlor, I instead found myself ascending a freight elevator and fumbling down an old, winding hallway.
Inside a large bright room was a man behind a counter with a small cactus that had one pink flower on its side.
After getting the estimate and paying the deposit, I noticed a series of old photos. One was a close-up of the man behind the counter playing an instrument.
I asked if he was a musician.
He said he was, and then asked if I had an extra moment.
Not really, but I’ll try, I said.
