The Importance of Early Experiences in Creativity

One of the throughlines of the book seems to be the way in which traumatic early experiences can be the starting point for creativity. For instance, your chapter on Jack Derida discusses his childhood in French Algeria and the peculiar position of Algeria's Jewish population during French colonial rule. And you also write about Chester Himes, another black American author whose brother suffered a terrible injury while performing a school science experiment and was blinded after the hospital he was taken to refuse him treatment due to the Jim Crow laws of the time. Could you talk a little bit about the importance of early experiences of suffering to the development of these writers?