She co-founded Third World Newsreel, a film company focusing on people of color and social justice issues.

[3] Choy was born in Shanghai in the People's Republic of China[3] as Chai Ming Huei to a Korean father and a Chinese mother.

Although she enjoyed the films, Choy became attuned to the prevalence of casual discrimination towards Asian people in American media.

She was a volunteer for WBAI in high school and described "[o]ne of her duties" as covering the Panther Twenty-One trial at the Tombs.

During the trial, she earned the trust of the Black Panther Party, and soon afterwards began doing errands for the New York City chapter.

"[3] In 1965,[6] Choy was given a scholarship to attend Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in New York, where she studied architecture.

During her tenure, Choy directed documentary films on the 1971 Attica prison uprising, the life of women in United States prisons, and the history of social activism in New York City's chinatown, as well as documentaries on the division of the Korean peninsula and Namibia's struggle for independence from South Africa, among others.

Choy struggled in seeking funding for the film due to its high-tension subject matter, shedding light on working-class racism in Detroit at a time when the US auto industry was failing, and Japanese cars were gaining popularity.

[2] After decades of directing in the documentary industry, Choy became a professor at Tisch School of Arts in New York City.

[7][10] In her time teaching, she has mentored many filmmakers, with her list of protégés including Todd Phillips, Raoul Peck, and Brett Morgen.