Pua Johnson

Pua Johnson has made a life out of surfing on this island. Bali is known for being extremely wave rich, and it has had its effect on Pua. She’s traveled all around the world for waves but always ends up back in Bali. She started surfing for the first time around the age of 3 when her dad first began pushing her into waves. Her dad is an American who grew up on the island of Kauai and eventually moved to Bali where he met Pua’s mother. Being that Pua is still half Indonesian half American, but much more white-passing than the other two women in the project, much of our conversation revolved around what that meant for her growing up in Bali and what she still has to deal with.

But Pua has plenty more going on in her life as well. She’s an accomplished surfer and a successful model as well. While she started doing surfing competitions growing up she quickly realized that contests were not what she wanted to focus on in her life because for her, it took a lot of the love she had for surfing away. Pua told me that it was on a trip to Hawaii when she was staying on the North Shore during the final stop on the professional surfing tour when it really hit her. After being there at the height of the excitement around the final contest, she took a look around and decided that no, that wasn’t the path for her.

Today, Pua has become more of free surfer, entering in competitions every now and again just for fun. She is finding her niche in the surfing world, focusing on getting barreled and surfing big waves instead of on competition. At the moment, there are very few female surfers on that path, so if Pua continues at the rate she is going, she’ll soon be a big face in the surfing world. So keep an eye out, because this mixed kid from Bali will soon be a pretty big deal in surfing.

Pua, like the other women, is born and raised in Bali and has never lived anywhere else for an extended period of time. Regardless of this, she is still viewed as a foreigner in her own home. Pua told me that there are definitely ups and down to having this split cultural identity and at times because of that she felt like she didn’t really fit in anywhere. She shared stories of how when she was younger and going shopping with her mom, at certain shops her mom would tell her to stay in the car because otherwise it would be double the price because Pua looked like a foreigner. Even just the other week Pua said she when she was surfing one of the local guys who has known Pua her entire life asked her when she was going back home [to the US].

She wasn’t telling me this with any sort of distain or anger however, it was more lighthearted and matter of fact than that. For Pua, this is just the way of life here and she doesn’t seem to let it weigh on her too much. Ironically one of the places she doesn’t receive questions about where she’s from is in Hawaii. Pua told me she feels really connected to the islands because it is one of the first places where she really felt like she belonged. In her words, just because of the way she looks, she looks like she’s from there, so people treat her like she belongs there.