Born in Shanghai to a Korean father and Chinese mother, Choy moved to New York City at 14. There she became involved with the Black Panther Party and local activism. While attending Manhattanville College she joined the Newsreel, later Third World Newsreel, an activist filmmaker collective that produced and distributed films highlighting key social movements of the late 1960s. She directed documentaries on the 1971 Attica prison uprising (“Teach Our Children”), the lives and inhumane conditions of women’s prisons (“Inside Women Inside”), the growing activism and organizing of 1970s New York Chinatown (“From Spikes to Spindles”) and other social issues.

Choy is best known for the award-winning “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” which tells the story of the murder of Chinese-American autoworker Vincent Chin. The documentary was one of the first films to delve into the impacts of anti-Asian racism and hate crimes in the United States.