Abstract. Review of the book Escravos and the world of communication: orality, reading and writing in the 19th century (2016) by Marialva Barbosa, the work discusses the ways of communication of slaves (sic) during centenary slavery through an analysis based on the perception of spacetime of orality, reading, writing and print. Outlining such territories, it is not a matter of providing material proof of the ability of the enslaved to read and write, but of reconstituting the process of Brazilian enslavement by placing in the center of analysis the communicational processes engendered by these subjects compulsorily subtracted from their original territory.