In the early days of World War II, an Irish-American English teacher and a Chinese woman from Singapore found themselves on the same boat to the United States. Both were fleeing the Japanese invasion of China.

More than 65 years later, both also would be characters in their granddaughter’s book.

Shavonne ClarkeFor her creative writing honors thesis, Sweet Briar College senior Shavonne Wei-Ming Clarke is putting her paternal grandparents’ stories to paper. The end product, which she plans to complete in graduate school, will be a novel.

“Because her grandparents died before she was born, the Nokesville, Va., resident has relied on oral history and diary entries to build the story’s framework. To fill in the blanks, she turns to her imagination.

“I’ve heard stories about them from my family, and have memoirs,” Clarke said. “My parents were extremely helpful. My grandfather — he’s in the latest chapter that I’m writing in the story — he kept a daily journal that he wrote about his whole life in, so it was really helpful in that respect.

“Also, my father had six brothers and sisters, so they all lived with these people and they grew up with them, so they were able to tell me lots of stories about them, and I found out a lot through what they had to tell me.”

Ruth-Ann Clarke“So far, four of the five chapters she has written focus on the life of her grandmother, Ruth-Ann. While on a family vacation last summer, Clarke’s father started talking about his mother, who died in 1972 on a Taiwanese mountaintop. Captivated by his stories, Clarke began writing the book as soon as she returned home.

“It came about just by my dad briefly mentioning how his mother died, and he was in college at the time,” she said. “I thought that was fascinating — the way he described it — and I questioned him further. Little did I know that there was this incredible story behind it all.”

The dramatic story of Ruth-Ann’s childhood could have been torn from the screenplays of “Raise the Red Lantern” or “The Joy Luck Club.” Ruth-Ann’s mother, Lily Wong, was the eighth wife of a wealthy businessman in Singapore. She married at 14, had three children, and then ran away with a Chinese movie producer, abandoning her children.

In my household, every day someone could be heard saying, “Dig the well before you are thirsty.” Perhaps familiar to some, my memory can speak now for what such a proverb truly means. - Ruth-Ann, from Chapter 1
“She ran away with a man named Run-Run Shaw when Ruth-Ann was five years old,” Clarke said. “So Ruth-Ann basically grew up sort of orphaned because her father was always away on business trips; he was always traveling.”

Clarke’s grandfather, Bob Clarke, was from New York. He was in China, teaching English in the Hunan Province when WWII broke out. Although Clarke had originally planned to write only about her grandmother, her parents persuaded her to include his story, too.

Bob Clarke“My dad had boxes of photocopies of his old journal entries, and he brought them out for me to read and I realized that he has just as dynamic of a part in this whole story as she has,” she said.

Her grandfather grew up poor, the son of a gardener. A wealthy benefactor paid for his education, and he eventually went to Yale. Later, he worked for the U.S. Foreign Services, and was stationed in various overseas locations, including Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan. Along the way, he and Ruth-Ann had seven children.

As a result, Clarke’s father spent a lot of time in Asia, thus her middle name, Wei-Ming. “I think it means ‘light’ in Chinese,” she said, laughing. “But it’s the masculine version because my dad wasn’t very adept at the Chinese language at the time. So, I think Mei-Ming is actually for girls, but I’m Wei-Ming.”

Clarke, who is majoring in English and creative writing, will defend her thesis in mid-April. She is taking 16 hours at Sweet Briar this semester, and says finishing the portion of the book she will present hasn’t been easy.

Ruth-Ann and Bob on their wedding day“There are always projects or papers and homework, and between that and writing something that isn’t due for weeks or months, often I find myself putting off the writing of this novel for something that’s due immediately,” she said in late March.

After graduating from Sweet Briar in May, Clarke will pursue a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Pittsburgh or the University of Maryland, specializing in creative writing. “I really started feeling serious about writing when I came to college,” she said.

“Before that, I knew that writing was what I did best, and I knew that it was what I wanted to do simply because of how I had always excelled in that area as opposed to others, but having taken workshops here at college, I felt more passionate about it.”

As for her book, at this point she’s not looking past the last page. Publishing her grandparents’ stories would be gravy. “That would be wonderful,” she said. “I’m not counting on anything, but it would be nice.”

— By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer