THE STORY I COULDN'T STOP WRITING.

• Author: Deparle, Jason

Thirty-two years ago, I stepped off a plane from the Philippines and started a job as an editor at the Washington Monthly, a position renowned for its mix of high purpose, low pay, shabby quarters, and mad-genius editing by its founder, Charlie Peters. Then I sat down to write a long story about living in a Manila shantytown.

The article revolved around Tita Comodas, the woman who had taken me in during my year in Manila. I had found her captivating--a mother of five with a sixth-grade education who read English newspapers using a Tagalog dictionary, took seriously the command to love thy neighbor, and poked fun at herself for her lowborn status. The months I'd spent sleeping on the floor of her hovel were my version of graduate school, a crash course in poverty and resilience.

I poured myself into the story and gave it to Charlie, who tore it apart. He called it treacly here and contradictory there, alternately self-indulgent and turgid. He mocked and berated. In Monthly lore, a hazing session like this was known as a "rain dance." As the new guy, I got one with special thunder. I was told it was a compliment.

I seethed and brooded, especially where I saw that Charlie was right. (To this day, I edit myself with his prosecutorial voice in my head.) Setting aside my wounded pride, I went back to writing, and Charlie did something few editors would have done--he put a long story about a Manila slum on the cover of the magazine. The story was both a character study of Tita and an exploration of the Philippines' fragile democracy. I wrote it as a tribute and an act of catharsis, and after more than 8,000 words I figured I was done as Tita's chronicler.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

I don't know who was more frightened the day we met, Tita or me. I was a twenty-six-year-old reporter in Manila on a year-long fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation. Interested in shantytowns, I asked a nun who lived in one called Leveriza to help me move in. When she told me to return in a couple of days, I figured she would use the time to approach a family or two. Instead, she led me through the alley and auctioned me off on the spot.

I understood just enough Tagalog to know that the first prospect was horrified. So was the second. Tita, the third, was simply struck mute. Her thin patience exhausted, Sister Christine stomped off. "If you don't want him, pass him on to someone else," she said. "And don't cook him anything special--if he gets sick, too bad." Tita stalled for as long as she...