Joy grew up in India and has lived in Kolkata and New Delhi. She attended Lady Shri Ram College and graduate school at the New School for Social Research in the US. She enjoys travelling, meeting people and writing. Badminton, tennis among friends, climate activism and good food round out her interests. She recently published a book The Deoliwallahs: The True Story of the 1962 Chinese-Indian Incarceration.

Joy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons and her mother. She was one of a handful of children born in the Deoli internment camp in Rajasthan.