Marion Glean
| Marion Patrick Jones | |
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| Born | Marion Patrick Jones 16 August 1931 Woodbrook, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago |
| Died | 2 March 2016 (aged 84) Port of Spain |
| Pen name |
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| Occupation | Novelist |
| Nationality | Trinidadian |
| Notable works |
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Marion Patrick Jones (16 August 1931 – 2 March 2016) was a Trinidadian novelist, whose training was in the fields of library science and social anthropology. She is also known by the names Marion Glean and Marion O'Callaghan (her married name). Living in Britain during the 1960s, she was also an activist within the black community. She was the author of two notable novels: Pan Beat, first published in 1973, and J’Ouvert Morning (1976), and also wrote non-fiction.
Jones was born in Woodbrook, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in 1934. She graduated from St Joseph's Convent — an exclusive Roman Catholic girls' school in Port of Spain run by Irish nuns, the Sisters of Cluny — winning the Girls' Open Island Scholarship in 1950, and placing third. She attended the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, St Augustine, one of the first two women to be admitted.
In the 1950s Jones went to New York City, where she earned a diploma in library science, paying for her education by working in a ceramics factory painting the wares. She worked with Manny Spiro to create a trade union. She then returned home to become a chartered librarian, working as Senior Librarian at Carnegie Library, San Fernando, Trinidad. In the 1960s she continued her studies in Britain, graduating with a BSc degree from the University of London. She did postgraduate studies in social anthropology at the London School of Economics, writing a thesis on the Chinese community in Trinidad.
A pacifist and a Quaker, known as Marion Glean during her time in Britain, she played a prominent role within the black community and "contributed to a series of statements by post-colonial activists on 'race' in the run-up to the 1964 UK general election, published by Theodore Roszak, editor of Peace News." As Kalbir Shukra describes in The Changing Pattern of Black Politics in Britain (1998): "After the election, Glean brought together Alan Lovell and Michael Randle, who were pacifists and former members of the Committee of 100, with other friends who had written for Peace News including an Asian woman, Ranjana Ash (an active member of the Movement for Colonial Freedom), C. L. R. James and Barry Reckord (African-Caribbean playwright and actor)."
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