He graduated from Gladstone Secondary School and went on to attend the University of British Columbia, where he studied creative writing.
[1] In 2010, it was selected as one of five books for the CBC's annual Canada Reads competition, where it was defended by physician Samantha Nutt.
[6] Written about his childhood within the Chinese Canadian community in Vancouver, the book explores both his discovery that he was adopted and his process of coming to terms with being gay.
[20] Three recently published monographs have featured chapters on Choy's publications up to Not Yet; these are: John Z. Ming Chen's The Influence of Daoism on Asian-Canadian Writers (Mellen, 2008), John Z. Ming Chen and Wei Li's A Study of Canadian Social Realist Literature: Neo-Marxist, Confucian, and Daoist Approaches (Inner Mongolia University Press, 2011), John Z. Ming Chen and Yuhua Ji's Canadian-Daoist Poetics, Ethics, and Aesthetics (Springer, 2015).
[1] In 2010, The Jade Peony was selected as one of five books for the CBC's annual Canada Reads competition, where it was defended by physician Samantha Nutt, founder of War Child.
[13][11] In 2012, Project Bookmark Canada presented two plaques in Vancouver's Chinatown with excepts from The Jade Peony written in both English and Mandarin.