The magazine arrived on a Tuesday, wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with kitchen twine. Alison Mutha, who had started the thing on a whim and a prayer in her cramped Philadelphia apartment, held it like a newborn.

Alison had poured her last $400 into printing 200 copies. She had written half the content under a pseudonym because she was terrified her own mother, a former debutante from Charleston, would see it. "Mutha," after all, was a family name she was reclaiming from the suffocating politeness of her upbringing.

You are not alone. Mutha sees you.